CMS Alumni Panel
b'Three Comparative Media Studies alums -- Sam Ford, Rekha Murthy, and Parmesh Shahani -- return to discuss their post-graduate lives.\\n\\nSam 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\\u2019s Program in Comparative Media Studies/Writing; and an instructor with Western Kentucky University\\u2019s Popular Culture Studies Program. Sam currently serves as Co-Chair of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association\\u2019s 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\\u2019Dwyer 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\\u2019s based in Bowling Green, Kentucky.\\n\\nRekha 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\\u2019s 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.\\n\\nAs part of PRX\\u2019s award-winning Apps team, Rekha has set new standards for public media\\u2019s mobile strategy and adoption with apps including the Public Radio Player, This American Life, and for major stations. She launched PRX\\u2019s iTunes distribution service, making independent productions and major national programs available for sale in the iTunes Store.\\n\\nRekha advises various transmedia initiatives for public media and served on the board of the Integrated Media Association (now part of Greater Public).\\n\\nBefore PRX, Rekha was a producer for NPR\\u2019s All Things Considered and an editor of NPR.org. She\\u2019s been a project manager and user experience designer for web and mobile clients.\\n\\nParmesh 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 \\u2014 an experimental idea-space that cross-\\xadpollinates 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\\u2019s masters\\u2019 thesis at CMS was released as a book \\u201cGay Bombay: Globalization, Love and (Be)Longing in Contemporary India\\u201d by Sage Publications in 2008. You can follow Parmesh on Twitter at @parmeshs.'