Trista Schroeder has been named general counsel and chief operating officer of the Sundance Institute, effective immediately, according to Variety.

Schroeder has served as the Institute's general counsel since 2020. In her expanded role she will provide executive leadership across legal affairs, governance, organisational risk management, labour relations, compliance, and organisational administration, continuing to report directly to Sundance Institute CEO David Linde.

She will also serve as a key member of the executive leadership team and a strategic partner to Linde as the Institute navigates one of the most consequential transitions in its history: the move of the Sundance Film Festival from Park City, Utah, to Boulder, Colorado, beginning in 2027. Schroeder led the negotiations for the Institute's request-for-proposal process that resulted in Boulder being selected as the festival's new home.

Ebs Burnough, the Sundance Institute Board Chair, announced the appointment alongside Linde.

Before joining Sundance, Schroeder was the founding executive director of the Hollywood Commission, the organisation founded to address sexual harassment in the entertainment industry. She worked alongside Anita Hill and Kathleen Kennedy, guiding the Commission through its start-up phase, setting its strategic five-year plan, and executive producing its inaugural Hollywood Commission: Ideas Summit.

Earlier in her career, Schroeder served as general counsel to The Team — the talent and sports agency formerly known as Wasserman — in Los Angeles, where she also held the title of Chief Administrative Officer. She began her legal career as an associate at the law firm Proskauer Rose, advising entertainment-industry clients on corporate and litigation matters.

Schroeder earned her J.D. at Georgetown University Law Center and served as a law clerk to the Honorable George H. King of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

The promotion consolidates legal and operational leadership under one role at a moment when the Sundance Institute is managing both a generational relocation and the broader pressures facing independent film — shrinking theatrical windows, shifting streaming economics, and a festival marketplace where acquisition deals have grown fewer and more cautious.

Schroeder's background bridges both sides of that world. Her work at The Team and at Proskauer Rose placed her inside the dealmaking machinery of talent representation and entertainment law. Her tenure at the Hollywood Commission put her at the centre of an industry-wide reckoning over workplace culture. At Sundance, she now oversees the legal and operational scaffolding for an organisation whose festival serves as the single most important acquisition market for independent film in the United States.

For the independent-film community, the appointment signals continuity. The Institute has leaned on Schroeder through the RFP process that produced the Boulder decision — a move that will reshape how the festival operates, who can attend, and which films reach buyers when the festival opens in its new home in 2027.