SERENA MAROTTA

Biography:

Serena is an investigative journalist, writer and researcher specializing in missing persons and cold cases in Canada. In January 2020, she launched CanadaUnsolved.com, an investigative website and blog dedicated to the search for answers to Canada’s cold cases, missing persons and unsolved murders. Her goal is to provide new details and insight about each person and the circumstances of their case, in hopes of keeping their names and stories alive—and to generate new information. Drawing on interviews with family and friends of victims and missing persons, private investigators, researchers, academics, and community members, as well as her independent on-the-ground reporting and intensive research / analysis of historical and current news coverage, Serena’s research and writing aims to provide critical context and details about each case – which are often excluded in traditional media coverage – while maintaining a victim-centered approach. She is particularly interested in under-reported historical missing persons cases, and the relationship between media and police investigations.

In addition to researching, interviewing, writing, and maintaining the website, Serena creates interactive maps and databases of missing persons cases for Canada Unsolved and has a strong interest in geographic profiling. She also manages the Canada Unsolved social media pages, and strongly believes in the power of social media to further investigations, as well as the power of information sharing – particularly between police and members of the media. Serena also created Canada Unsolved to serve as a platform and resource for families of missing persons and victims, and the site contains a directory of resources and organizations for anyone who wants to get involved in the search for answers to the thousands of unsolved cases in Canada and around the world. In 2021, Serena graduated the Master of Media in Journalism and Communications (MMJC) program at the University of Western Ontario and was awarded the C. Edward Wilson Prize for Media Research for her degree-ending Capstone investigation and research of a historical missing children’s case in Ontario. She is currently producing a podcast and multi-media website about the case. Serena has written for several publications, including The Globe and Mail. She holds a B.A. in Media, Information and Technoculture (MIT) from Western and a Postgraduate Public Relations Certificate from Humber College. She is a part-time student at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies in the Creative Writing Certificate program.