Jermaine Anthony Richards is a global communication, media, and technology scholar, producer, and strategist. He uses comparative methods to assess how procedural media, systems, and technologies are deployed to produce human safety, security, and stability amid global humanitarian crises, risks, and disasters.
Richards is a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow and PhD candidate at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication. His dissertation – advised by Robeson Taj Frazier (Chair), Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, and Henry Guy Jenkins III – examines the contradictory aesthetics, ethics, and mechanics of social impact games that attempt to redress manifestations of (necro)political violence.
Jermaine holds graduate degrees from the London School of Economics and Political Science (MSc in Global Media, Advertising Club of New York Presidential Scholar) and the University of Southern California (MA in Global Communication and MA in Communication, LSE-USC Global Media and Communications Research Associate Scholar). He earned his BS in Communications Technology (Digital Systems Engineering) and Studio Art as an AD Club Innovation, Advertising, and Media Scholar at York College, The City University of New York.
After beginning his career on New York City’s Madison Avenue, working across the advertising, media, and entertainment industries, Richards ascended to production roles at Wieden+Kennedy. There, he led production and co-designed the user interface and experience for Momo Pixel's Hair Nah: A Travel Game About a Black Woman Tired of People Touching Her Hair. This critically acclaimed game critiques racialized boundary invasion. Hair Nah has exhibited at the Tate Modern, V&A, and Smithsonian; featured in Vogue and The New York Times; appears in over 15 books and journal articles across academic fields; and is regularly taught at institutions such as MIT, Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Chicago for its contributions to cultural and educational movements surrounding the CROWN Act. Richards later freelanced as a media arts producer across London, Paris, and Tokyo.
As a strategist, Richards served as a New America DIGI Fellow. He led a landscape analysis on digital transformation strategy in Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Myanmar/Burma, and Viet Nam, supported by Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Previous work focused on Indonesian government protests, post-humanitarian crises of debt accumulation in Small Island Developing States, and South-South development frameworks between Southeast Asia and CARICOM.
He also worked as a DIGI Associate in public finance via Sovereign Wealth Funds at the Responsible Asset Allocator Initiative (RAAI), which focused on mobilizing capital from the world’s largest institutions toward responsible investing aligned with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. The RAAI Index offered the first comprehensive analysis of how the world’s largest long-term investors are developing strategies to manage environmental, social, and governance crisis.
Jermaine writes and consults on topics spanning social impact games, gamification, simulations, and virtual worlds across a variety of ethical matters concerning human difference; digital development strategies; corporate social responsibility; and humanitarian communication, media, and technology.
Richards’ resume, curriculum vitae, and references are available upon request.