Jermaine Anthony Richards

About Jermaine Anthony Richards

Jermaine Anthony Richards is the child of immigrants from Jamaica. His mother (a civil administrator) and grandmother — a mathematics teacher in Jamaica turned nurse manager in the States — raised him in Canarsie, an Afro-diasporic residential neighborhood on a peninsula along Brooklyn's south shore.

Jermaine's passion for computational media, art and design, and advocacy blossomed at the High School for Innovation in Advertising and Media, a specialized, CUNY-affiliated Career and Technical Education school. He gained industry experience at legacy Madison Avenue agencies McCann, FCB, and Deutsch, where he learned creative strategy and production while working on national campaigns. After interning on Deutsch's NiceBot, an anti-cyberbullying spambot, he started building high-performance computers to realize his vision of using technology to tackle social problems.

A third-generation CUNY graduate, Jermaine earned his BS in communications technology and studio art at York College. After producing branded interactive experiences at Wieden+Kennedy, he completed dual master’s degrees in global media and global communication at the London School of Economics and USC Annenberg as an Advertising Club of New York Presidential Scholar and an LSE-Annenberg Global Research Scholar. His work examined how environmental and infrastructural harms affect marginalized populations — from Indonesian air-quality disinformation to cyber-physical water infrastructure in the US South, where systems built in the antebellum era still shape the inequitable provision of public health today.

Jermaine is pursuing a PhD in the political economy of global communication at USC's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, with a dual affiliation with the School of Cinematic Arts' Interactive Media & Games Division. His research examines how computational media systems — particularly video games — are used as strategic tools for mitigating social crises. His science and technology studies certificate focuses on how gaming and simulation technologies can aid scientific, medical, legal, and policy practitioners.

His career spans the public, private, nonprofit, and social sectors. As a New America Fellow, Jermaine led research on digital transformation in the Lower Mekong Region for the Australian Government's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. He is also an award-winning creative producer and designer. He led the production of Momo Pixel's Hair Nah, a video game that influenced national discourse around the CROWN Act and, in the wake of the #MeToo movement, broader global conversations about hair discrimination and the politics of uninvited touch. Hair Nah has been exhibited at the Smithsonian, Tate Modern, and V&A, and has been added to the Strong National Museum of Play’s permanent collection. The game is featured in books and articles across the humanities, social sciences, engineering, and technology fields, and is taught at over 100 universities globally, including Harvard, MIT, and Chicago.

Jermaine's New American experience assures him that, even within limits, there are limitless pathways to social change. He plans to continue producing, designing, and steering resources towards the creation, distribution, and exhibition of multimedia experiences aimed at advocacy.