CMS Alumni Panel

Three Comparative Media Studies alums return to discuss their post-graduate lives.

Sam Ford is Director of Audience Engagement at strategic communication and marketing firm Peppercomm. He is co-author of the 2013 book Spreadable Media and co-editor of the 2011 book The Survival of Soap Opera. Sam is a contributing author to Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, and Inc.; a research affiliate with MIT’s Program in Comparative Media Studies/Writing; and an instructor with Western Kentucky University’s Popular Culture Studies Program. Sam currently serves as Co-Chair of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association’s Ethics Committee. He has recently published work with The Journal of Fandom Studies, Panorama Social, Cinema Journal, The Journal of Digital & Social Media Marketing, Advertising Age, PRWeek, PR News, O’Dwyer PR, IABC Communication World, The Public Relations Strategist, PropertyCasualty360, Oxford University Press Bibliographies, and the NYU Press book, Making Media Work, among other outlets. He’s based in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

Rekha Murthy is Director of Projects + Partnerships at PRX, where she finds innovative ways for public media stations and producers to reach audiences and earn revenue. Rekha runs PRX’s digital distribution program, where she forges new, non-broadcast pathways for audio works. These range from established channels like iTunes and Amazon, to aggregators like TuneIn and Stitcher, to entertainment and education services large and small.

As part of PRX’s award-winning Apps team, Rekha has set new standards for public media’s mobile strategy and adoption with apps including the Public Radio Player, This American Life, and for major stations. She launched PRX’s iTunes distribution service, making independent productions and major national programs available for sale in the iTunes Store.

Rekha advises various transmedia initiatives for public media and served on the board of the Integrated Media Association (now part of Greater Public).

Before PRX, Rekha was a producer for NPR’s All Things Considered and an editor of NPR.org. She’s been a project manager and user experience designer for web and mobile clients.

Parmesh Shahani, listed in 2012 as one of 25 Indians to watch out for by Financial Times, is the head of the Godrej India Culture Lab — an experimental idea-space that cross-­pollinates the best ideas and people working on India from across the academic, creative and corporate worlds to explore what it means to be modern and Indian. In addition, Parmesh also serves as the Editor-at-large for Verve magazine, India. He is a Yale World Fellow, currently spending a semester in New Haven. He is also a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, TED Fellow, and a Utrecht University-Impakt Fellow. Parmesh’s masters’ thesis at CMS was released as a book “Gay Bombay: Globalization, Love and (Be)Longing in Contemporary India” by Sage Publications in 2008. You can follow Parmesh on Twitter at @parmeshs.