Work with thought leaders and academic experts in social media

I am a marketing professor who specializes in augmented/extended realities, metaverse marketing, brand storytelling, and influencer marketing. I am a public speaker and consultant who helps your brand thrive in today's and tomorrow's new realities. <br> \~ ⨏ \~ <br> MY PASSION is to explore augmented reality’s strategic potential for marketing: I published the first-ever conceptual article on AR marketing, which won Article of the Year award and is one of the most-cited publications about this topic. I have taught AR since 2015 as part of my social media and digital marketing courses at Cal Poly. At Brock University, I developed and teach the world’s first dedicated Augmented Reality Marketing courses for undergraduate as well as MBA students. <br> \~ ⚬ \~ <br> MY RESEARCH combines ethnographic methods with socio-cultural frameworks to cut through the complexities of marketing and consumption: I explore how augmented reality can deepen consumer/brand relationships, how it helps customers feel more competent and autonomous, how Pokémon GO players co-create and transport into hybrid-realities, how managers can deploy AR initiatives, and how various types of augmented realities offer different strategic opportunities for brands. My social media research explores how marketers can build their brands in today’s polarized and tribal societies by fighting back against online critics. <br> \~ × \~ <br> I LOVE building bridges between academia and the broader business community: I'm a member of Adweek's Academic Council and serve on the advisory board of Schulich’s Future of Marketing Institute. I regularly publish research-driven insights in Adweek, MKTGsquad, and other AR-specific publications. I provide expertise for marketing agencies and consult wine, CPG and technology companies in the US and Canada on branding and augmented reality marketing. I decipher the babel and help people see the big picture. <br> \~ 🦊 \~

I am broadly interested in the factors that promote or diminish happiness and well-being. My research program explores how constant connectivity to the Internet impacts people’s relationships and well-being and how we can harness technology to improve well-being and promote positive behavioral change. I am a Vanier Scholar and a Rising Star of the Association for Psychological Science (APS). I have written for *The* *New York Times*, *The Conversation*, and *Psychology Today*, and my work has been covered by other prestigious publications such as *The* *Economist, BBC, NPR, Forbes, Fast Company, Time Magazine, The Wall Stree Journal, National Geographic,* and *The Washington Post*. I have consulted for companies such as Ipsos, Canvas8, and Luce Research. See more at www.kushlev.com

Jim Samuel is an Associate Professor of Practice and Executive Director of the Informatics Program at the Bloustein School. He is an information and artificial intelligence (AI) scientist, with significant industry experience in finance, technology, entrepreneurship and data analytics. Dr. Samuel’s primary research covers human intelligence and artificial intelligences interaction and information philosophy.  Dr. Samuel’s applied research focuses on the optimal use of big data and smart data driven AI applications, textual analytics, natural language processing and artificially intelligent public opinion informatics. His expertise extends to socioeconomic implications of AI, applied machine learning, social media analytics, AI education and AI bias. Dr. Samuel completed his Ph.D. from the Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College – City University of New York, and he also has M.Arch and M.B.A (International Finance) degrees.  Dr. Samuel has worked with large multinational financial services corporations, and advises businesses and organizations on data analytics and AI driven value creation strategies. He is passionate about research driven thought leadership in AI, information philosophy, analytics and informatics. 

Cory Young is a professor and chair of the communications department at Ithaca College. She received his PhD in intercultural communication from Bowling Green State University in 2001 and his MS in cultural studies from the University of Birmingham in 1996.

Sridhar Narayanan’s research focuses on empirical analysis of marketing problems, through the estimation of econometric models on behavioral data and through field experiments. His current streams of streams focus on various problems in digital advertising and other aspects of digital marketing, and on the adoption and usage of modern marketing practices and technologies by small businesses in emerging markets. He has focused on causal estimation using experimental, quasi-experimental and econometric approaches. Topics he has focused on in the past include learning and decision-making under uncertainty, peer effects, pharmaceutical marketing, the role of marketing over the product life cycle among others. A particular area of interest of his is the application of Bayesian methods to problems in marketing and empirical industrial organization.

Melinda Haughey is a PhD student in Human Computer Interaction at the University of Washington. She is also the co-founder and CEO of Proxi, a startup that is developing a new way to interact with technology using proximity sensors. Prior to her work in HCI, she was a chemical engineer, and she holds a BS from Texas A&M University.

Dr. Anindya Ghose is the Heinz Riehl Chair Professor of Business at New York University Stern School of Business. His research interests are in the areas of IT-enabled platforms, services and products, including mobile apps, social media, digital marketplaces, and big data analytics. He has also done work on understanding consumer behavior in digital environments. He has published over 130 papers in academic journals and has been honored with several best paper awards. He has also served on the editorial boards of several journals, including Management Science, Information Systems Research, and MIS Quarterly. He is a Fellow of the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).

María Elena Placencia is Professor of Linguistics and Spanish.  She joined Birkbeck in 1995 and teaches in the areas of (Spanish) Pragmatics,  (Digital) Discourse Analysis as well as Spanish as a foreign language. She has performed different administrative roles, including that of Head of Department/Assistant Dean, and is currently Programme Director of various undergraduate programmes within the Department of Languages, Cultures and Applied Linguistics. Her current research is in the areas of variational pragmatics, with a focus on e-service encounters, and digital discourse analysis, with a focus on social media interaction. Her latest project examines the language of exclusion on Twitter in the context of interethnic interaction. Past projects have looked at a range of topics including, among others, complimenting behaviour in social media, the discourse of bargaining in e-commerce, rapport management and small talk in service encounters, (im)politeness in familial contexts, addressing behaviour and discursive racism. María Elena has published extensively on these topics.

Anne Jobin is a Swiss sociologist and researcher who specializes in the areas of science, technology, and society (STS). She holds a Doctor of Social Sciences from Université de Lausanne, and has been a visiting research scholar at Tufts University and Cornell University. She is currently a researcher at the (ETH) and the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne.

Jennifer Aaker is a marketing professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business and the author of several books on the topic, including The Dragonfly Effect: Quick, Effective, and Powerful Ways to Use Social Media to Drive Social Change. She has also conducted research on the psychology of happiness and self-regulation.

Dan Baack is an expert in advertising, brand management and international marketing. His academic research focuses on how differences in how consumers process information affect promotional activities. This includes investigations of creativity and advertising effectiveness, of advertising’s impact on brand image and of culture’s influence on marketing activity.

Dr. Jenna Drenten is an associate professor of marketing in the Quinlan School of Business where she studies *digital consumer culture*: the sociocultural role of social media platforms in everyday consumer life. Her research explains how digital culture—from social media algorithms to the influencer attention economy—structures social and cultural consumption ideologies and how consumers’ lived experiences are mediated, translated, and commodified through digital culture. This includes multiple facets of digital consumer culture—from individual consumer behavior to systemic macro-level structures—across a range of social media platforms. Jenna is an expert in the field of marketing on qualitative social media research methods. Jenna’s work has been published in leading academic journals such as *Journal of Consumer Research*, *Journal of Advertising*, and *New Media & Society*, and her expertise has been featured extensively in media outlets including *The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times,* and *The Washington Post*. For more information, go to [www.jennadrenten.com](http://www.jennadrenten.com/). Jenna serves as an associate editor for the *Journal of Advertising Research*, as the communications chair for GENMAC: Gender, Markets, and Consumers, and as an associate board member for the Chicago Public Library Foundation. In the Quinlan School of Business, she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in marketing, integrated marketing communications, social media marketing, and brand storytelling. Before pursuing her Ph.D., Jenna worked in corporate communications at BMW Manufacturing Co. in Greer, SC and worked in special events and marketing at Minyanville Media, Inc., an Emmy-Award winning online financial publishing company in New York City.

Dr. Suhang Wang is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Pennsylvania State University. He received his PhD in Computer Science from Arizona State University in 2018, and his Master's degree in Electrical Engineering: Systems from the University of Michigan in 2013. Before joining Penn State, Dr. Wang was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research interests include natural language processing, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. He was recognized for his work at the International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining in 2017 and the Fifth ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining in 2016.

Catherine Tucker is a Professor of Economics and Data Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is also a member of the MIT Sloan School of Management's faculty. She is a world-renowned expert in the fields of big data, machine learning, and consumer behavior. She has worked extensively on the use of data science to improve public policy and has been a consultant to government agencies and businesses around the world. In addition to her academic work, she is a popular speaker and has been featured in many media outlets, including The Economist, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired.