Jermaine Anthony Richards

About Jermaine Anthony Richards

Jermaine Anthony Richards is a child of immigrants from Jamaica; he was born and raised in New York City.

Jermaine's passion for computing blossomed at the High School for Innovation in Advertising and Media. While there, he gained hands-on experience at prominent Madison Avenue advertising agencies, where he learned multimedia production and human-computer interaction design. At home, he built custom computer rigs to explore game design, driven by a vision of using interactive art to tackle social problems.

A third-generation CUNY graduate, Jermaine earned his BS in Communications Technology and Studio Art at CUNY York College. After producing interactive experiences for global brands at Wieden+Kennedy, he completed his MSc in Global Media at the London School of Economics as an Advertising Club of New York Presidential Scholar. His LSE master's thesis examined Indonesian air quality disinformation and its implications for ethnicized women’s and children's health. He then earned an MA in Global Communication at the University of Southern California (USC), researching cyber-biosecurity, critical water infrastructure, and health in the US South during the COVID-19 pandemic as an Annenberg Research Scholar.

Jermaine is pursuing his MA/PhD in Communication – the study of complex systems and adaptive processes – at USC’s Annenberg School. He specializes in the aesthetics, ethics, and politics of game-based advocacy, where he engages video games as strategic tools for managing global risk and political crises. He is also pursuing a Science and Technology Studies certificate, where he integrates post-rational thinking models with computational, mathematical, and ecological approaches to social advocacy.

Jermaine's career spans the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. As a New America Fellow, he led research on digital transformation in the Lower Mekong Region, supported by the Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. He is also an award-winning producer and curator specializing in advocacy-driven video, interactive, and mixed-reality art experiences. Notably, he led the production of Hair Nah, a video game influencing national discourse on anti-hair discrimination laws such as the CROWN Act. Hair Nah has exhibited at global cultural institutions (e.g., the Smithsonian, MassArt, Tate Modern, and the V&A museums). Hair Nah is also part of the Strong National Museum of Play’s permanent collection and is regularly taught at MIT, Harvard, Stanford, and internationally at Oxbridge.

Jermaine’s New American experience assures him that, even within limits, there are limitless pathways to social change. When he is not conducting research, writing, or jamming on his bass guitar and drums, he is at work founding a cross-sectoral advocacy innovation and production studio, where he plans to continue developing media experiences to steer social development.