Mary Leonard founded the UPR – Mayagüez film program. She directed Textos Tuertos, staged readings of work by Rita Indiana and Hugo Rios read by the writers. She was director of Optika: A Symposium on Visual Narration, and co-director of the conference Mapping New Caribbean Cinema. She is co-host of Caribbean Film Forum, online conversations about Caribbean film, and a recipient of the NEH grant that funded the establishment of an Oral History Center at UPRM with a documentary film component. She teaches Caribbean film at the University of Cincinnati and curates Caribbean film presentations: Jurakán (2022), Caribbean Eye (2024).