Experienced sport media professional passionate about brand management, marketing insights and leveraging sport as a catalyst to build communities and foster important values.

Current MBA Student, and most recent experience was at Back on My Feet, an organization that uses running, as well as health and wellness to aid house-less individuals.

Born and raised in Washington state, Annie Ward graduated from Western Washington University, with a BA in Literature and Philosophy in 2019. She has since shifted her study towards new media technologies, focusing specifically on the ways in which digital media changes how we tell stories and interact with our selves. She enjoys research and writing, and is interested in exploring the types of jobs that are available within different media industries.

Nandini is a marketing professional based out of Mumbai. Until recently she was heading the Brand and Marketing Department of Indian gourmet superfood start-up Pink Harvest Farms; having started work with the company while it was first making its shift to a B2C market, helping it grow from a hyperlocal business to a national brand. Before this she has been a brand strategy and design consultant, a copywriter, a creative director and holds a law degree from the University of Mumbai having worked with Disney India while specializing in intellectual property rights. She hopes to expand her knowledge of marketing, consulting through the MBA at McCombs, while expanding her knowledge of the media and entertainment industries through the affiliateship with CEMI.

Kellen Sharp is a first-year MA in the Radio-Television-Film department studying Media Studies. He is a Wisconsin native and recent graduate from the University of Wisconsin -Madison, where he earned a BA in Communication Arts: Radio, TV, Film and minored in Digital Studies. Kellen is passionate about media’s ability to connect communities and cultivate identities.

Laurel is a third-year PhD student and Assistant Instructor in the Radio-Television-Film Department. Her interests sit at the intersections of fandom, fan studies, and nostalgia, particularly the sites where fans, creators, and industry collide. She is interested in the “reboot culture” boom of recent adaptations, remakes, reboots, and new franchise entries, and how nostalgia factors into the production, marketing, and reception of these media texts.Her other research interests include online platforms, science fiction, and superheroes.

Caleb is an MBA candidate at the McCombs School of Business at UT Austin focusing on Strategy, Brand Management and Marketing. Prior to McCombs, he received his undergraduate degree in Supply Chain Management and a minor in Communications and Media Studies from Texas A&M University. After graduating, he worked in various supply chain roles across multiple industries focusing on creating tools to streamline processes for customers and internal stakeholders.

Outside of work, he worked on several entrepreneurial ventures and passion projects in the media space. He co-founded a networking and media entity to connect African Diaspora, called BunaTime, and was able to market and grow the social media presence to over 100k followers in one year across all platforms. He also started a music label to release and produce music for myself and other artists. Amazingly, the music created has garnered millions of views on YouTube and other music platforms, played on multiple television programs around the world (including MTV, Mnet [South Korea], and CityTV [Canada]), and has allowed him to perform several shows and festivals from SXSW here in Austin to Tokyo. His early success in the music industry has also given him the opportunity of being a Voting Member for the Recording Academy (Grammy Awards), his childhood dream.

Michelle Lee is a second year MBA student at McCombs School of Business at UT. Upon graduating with a Business Honors and Finance BBA degree from UT, she moved to San Francisco to work as a management consultant at IBM. After gaining experience helping multiple Fortune 100 companies improve their business strategy, she took an Operations role at a fintech startup, automating processes for their online platform. This sparked her interest in the product space, which led her to a product pricing and analysis role at a wealth management company. After spending 4 years in San Francisco, Michelle moved back to Texas and decided to pursue her MBA to switch into an industry and field that more closely aligned with her passions. She has always been an avid consumer of tv and films and would love to build a career in the media and entertainment space, working with innovative products and technology during such a transformational period for the industry.

Ann is a PhD student in the Radio-Television-Film department at the University of Texas at Austin. She earned her bachelor's degree in Film and Media Studies from the University of Oklahoma and her master's degree in Media Studies from the University of Oregon. In her doctoral work, Ann plans to pursue questions about how aesthetic elements influence how power operates in sex scenes and the relationship between those aesthetic elements and media production processes.Ann has worked in feature film and television production in a variety of freelance positions, most recently as a Second Assistant Director, Location Coordinator, and Producer.