Students and Alumni

Kristen Eads is a local, multimedia designer for social justice issues. For the past two years, she has been contributing designs to Ohio Universities Communications and Marketing Department. Kristen won an Award of Excellence from the University & College Designers Association for her project “Forever OHIO.” Kristen explores the intersection of brand development with emerging technologies among socially responsible companies.

Dishari Mukherjee was a faculty member at the International Institute of Fashion Design and Interior Design where she taught Computer Aided Design, Fashion Illustration and Concept Development.  Her current interests lie in the exploration of individual transformation of the human condition – be it through socio-political, economic or personal experience – and the ability to portray the reasoning and stories behind personal metamorphosis.

Akash Pamarthy is a photographer and videographer born and raised in Hyderabad, India. The concepts of culture, poverty and pain have always intrigued him and kept him occupied in a search for answers to equality and humanity. The hunt for answers motivates him to work with subjects in a manner that convey respect, dignity and recognition. These ideals are what push Akash into the world to share stories and to bring change in society.

Les Yakymchuk is a visual communication specialist and the owner of Linza production studio which focuses on commercial animation videos for NGOs and socially responsible businesses. With a background in journalism and documentary filmmaking Les is researching new ways of immersive storytelling in augmented reality. Les’s dream is to combine education and entertainment to build a brand-new edutainment tool.

Currently on leave.

Olena Zenchenko is a graphic designer who currently works with books creation and promotion at Osnovy Publishing. She works building brand identity and providing visual communications for a member of the global anti- corruption movement in Ukraine. Olena’s goal is to provide interactive and immersive data visualizations for potential readers to make the big data clear and understandable for everyone.

Currently on leave.

Anthony Acheampong is a motion graphics designer for Tek TV via the communication department at KNUST in Ghana. He is also a member of the Ghana Institute of Graphic Artists, with aspirations of being a professor of art and design. Anthony’s background in film, video production, graphic design, and illustration. made him well suited to be Head of the Multimedia Graphics Section for Tek TV.

Augustine Adjei is a self-taught creative with over five years of experience in the media arts. As CEO of MotionKoncepts he uses graphic design and video to create visual identities for brands). His marketing background from the University of Ghana has created impressive results working with top brands and music labels in both Ghana and the United States, including work for Grammy Producer LMR productions, Diplomat Music Group, and Standard Chartered Bank.

Jeffrey Agyei is a Creative Designer with experience in marketing, corporate branding, and multimedia production (both above-the-line and below-the-line). collaborated with marketing and advertising executives at both large and small businesses to create high quality visual content to drive increased revenue. His vision and creativity bring projects to life through strategic brand identity, photography, print and experiential design.

Jorge Castillo-Castro is a proud alumnus of OHIO’s Visual Communication program and calls himself an Environmental Visual Communicator passionate about nature and its stories. He spent years studying and documenting the unique ecology of Ecuador’s highest peaks and paramos. He’s also a contributor of the photographic projects Yasuni en Imágenes and Wao Mimo, which portrayed Yasuni National Park’s natural wonders, cultures, and threats.

Kwamina Kurefi Edonu is Head of the Audio Visual Unit at the University of Mines and Technology in Ghana. Prior to working at the university, Kwamina was a visual arts teacher for many years. He was also a Visual Arts Examiner for the West African Examination Council. He is especially interested in combining his artistic background with educational technologies so that he can carry that knowledge with to pursue a career in academia.

Chris Joecken is a filmmaker with more than a decade of production and post-production experience. He specializes in editing, color grading and motion graphics for commercials, music videos and narrative films. Chris is also an adjunct instructor at Cincinnati State Community College, where he teaches post-production. He also writes and directs short films, releasing three since 2020: Possum, Uncle Jevo, and This is Their Life Now.

Loriene Perera is a self-taught photographer, who joined Reuters more than a decade ago as a photo editor. During her time at the esteemed wire agency, photos that she contributed and real-time edited have circulated among major news outlets including BBC, the Economist, New York Times and Wall Street Journal. Loriene’s approach to photography stems from her desire to capture life’s ephemeral & spontaneous moments.

Nina Asiamah is a graphic designer and marketing expert for MotionKoncepts where she concentrates on social media management and print design. She also works for First Atlantic Bank as a Relationship Officer specializing in corporate communication. In her free time, Nina uses her background in photography and visual design to craft a long-standing blog on Ghanaian lifestyle and current events.

Stephen Casleberry has been a writer, photographer, photojournalist, reporter, scholar, musician, public speaker, literary analyst, and teacher. Recently, Stephen has been documenting the covid outbreak in China, where he has lived for many years, serving as Department Chair and Academic Coordinator for various schools. Prior to living in China, he taught History and Economics on the Alamo Navajo Reservation in New Mexico

Prince Cobb is a creative designer transferring from the School of Visual Communication, where he works as a visual design expert for the Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine. Within the rapidly changing communication field, Prince is interested in exploring the transition of traditional media into more interactive and immersive experiences that can be applied to advertising, promotion, and educational purposes.

Edmund Darko has an MBA from Edinburgh Business School, making him an obvious choice for his current job as head of the Administration and Business Relationship Unit at Enterprise Life. However, his life-long creative work in visual folk art drives his artistic passion. Edmund strives to develop a craft-making enterprise in Ghana, rooted in animation and interactive storytelling that combine both tactile and digital art into limitless possibilities.

Holly Ittel is an alumna of the College of Fine Arts, and recently served as the Exhibitions Director for The Dairy Barn Arts Center where she facilitated artist review, discussion, and exhibition design. Holly’s connection to artists, funding agents, and the community, places her in a unique position to best understand how to artistically and professionally exhibit her own work and the work of others in this new digital landscape.

David Oyuke is an African award-winning voice artist, creative, and poet with more than ten years of experience in broadcast media as a radio host and audio producer. David has been involved in Hip Hop and Poetry for many years and currently hosts the daily breakfast show on Kenya’s National FM station. David was also the station manager for Family Media, playing a central role in pre-production, production, and post-production.

Koki Oyuke is a professional author and editor, turned self-publishing practitioner and entrepreneur. Koki has worked for more than a dozen years in every stage of book publishing for both adult and young audiences, and is the founder, editor, and lead designer for Kizuri Books Publishing in Nairobi Kenya with directed interest in expanding her media business into interactive, online storytelling and animated projects for an international audience.

Olivia Raney is a Program Specialist for The International Council on Development and Learning, a human development-based not-for-profit agency, where her team coordinated an online learning platform for neurodiversity-affirming care, created the organizations promotional material and produced a documentary highlighting four multicultural families featured in their projects. Olivia travels widely as a photographer and documentarian of life.

Walker Boyle is a musician and multi-media artist from Baltimore, MD. Combining audio, video, web, and game elements, Walker’s work critiques social constructions of gender through the lens of queer futurism, sci fi, and fantasy.  Walker recently completed their MFA Thesis Project, an interactive web story that blurs the lines between music video and video games, exploring embodied experiences through a screen.

Chase Goodwin recently completed his Fulbright research at the Université Grenoble Alpes in Grenoble, France where he explored the intersection of language and technology, specifically in the domains of artificial intelligence research and virtual reality development. Previously, Chase used immersive technology in the classrooms at Haugland Learning Center where he taught children and young adults on the autism spectrum.

Abolfazl Jarrahi is the founder and creative manager of Pebblestyles, a fashion design team whose brand is currently in stores across the United States. A graduate of Ohio University’s Communication and Development program, Abol has a passion for using media and design as social practice – specifically for social and political change. He is an avid photographer and recently developed an app to engage artists and community members.

"I am an interdisciplinary designer, thinker, and maker. I sometimes call myself a "Creative Technologist" or a "Human-Centered Designer," but what I really mean is that I love implementing unconventional and innovative approaches to any problem I encounter. My favorite problems to tackle and the common thread among my work are those concerning the ethics of emerging technologies. Some examples include my work with climate change action, accountable outer space exploration, responsible artificial intelligence, and accessibility of healthcare. I have nearly a decade of experience with various notable institutions including NASA, Carnegie Mellon's Software Engineering Institute, Ohio University Scripps College of Communication, the FAA, and Virginia Polytechnic's Institute for Creativity Arts and Technology. I have a breath of skillsets including those in the fields of engineering, media arts, communication, and design and have endured a variety of life experiences. Together they form my understanding of the world, and how we can change it for good."

Mariah Waring is the owner of Mariah Felice Web Design. She has a deep-seated interest in using immersive technologies to work with language-based immigration issues and helping people to assimilate to a new environment. With a background in cultural anthropology and teaching English as a Second Language, Mariah is interested in exploring the connection, divisiveness and influence of media on those frequently marginalized in our society.

Josh Hoffman is the co-owner of Suspect 7 – a video production company in Chicago – where he oversees the 3D animation pipeline. Josh is stepping away from Suspect 7 to use his 3D animation skills to reengage with a passion of his: game development. Josh is specifically interested in developing video games for the LGBTQ community as a way to empower the audience through better character representation and approaches to storytelling.

Haiyun Jiang is completing her Photojournalism MA degree in the School of Visual Communication this year, and plans to continue her education in the MFA program. She was recently selected as a participant in the 7th Annual New York Times Portfolio Review with top editors and photographers in the industry. Haiyun has worked on Capital Hill, initiating the documentary “A Lonely Journey” about Syrian refugees resettling in Annapolis Maryland.

Brian Koscho is the director and producer of Invisible Ground in Athens, Ohio, a project centered on place-based storytelling in local history using a podcast and a series of augmented reality Immersive Historic Markers. Koscho completed his MFA in Communication Media Arts at Ohio University in April 2022. Along with his work in media, Brian is an adjunct instructor at Ohio University in the Scripps College of Communication teaching podcasting and graphic design. Out in the community, he has taught on the topics of Community Storytelling, Audio Storytelling, and Podcasting, and helped with workshops on Documentary Film and Storytelling for high school students in Appalachian Ohio. Koscho has produced multimedia work and collaborated in various forms with Stuart’s Opera House (where he worked from 2007-2019) and its Nelsonville Music Festival, Inside Appalachia, West Virginia Public Broadcasting, POV, WOUB Public Media, Mid Atlantic Arts, Foundation for Appalachian Ohio, Ohio History Connection, Ohio Arts Council, Mount Zion Baptist Church Preservation Society, and the Southeast Ohio History Center.

Brians thesis, Invisible Ground: The Berry Hotel, is a multimedia project utilizing audio, augmented reality, visual elements, and place-based storytelling to engage people in the history of their communities. For this project, Invisible Ground is partnering with the Southeast Ohio History Center to create a series of Immersive Historic Markers in Athens County, Ohio.

I am currently preparing for a teaching assignment in the Fall at Saint Louis University as an Assistant Professor. The core of the classes is to equip students with tools that are adaptable to evolving digital media technologies. Prior to the MFA program, my professional background was in traditional media which served as a great foundation to experiment with new media tools within the program. This led me to creating and producing a digital multimedia project on vaccine information that merged an interactive media platform with participatory storytelling. The project was testing ground for what an active audience experiencing interactive media technologies means for the future of storytelling as educators and practitioners. The software I used for my thesis project was also adapted for different award winning project that has had positive reception by its target demographic. The MFA program made space for experimenting with new ideas and technology. I came into the program insecure about my ideas and lost on what to do with them. My experience in and out of class made me a forever curious learner and solidified my identity as a storyteller. I hope to be for my students, through teaching and mentoring, what my amazing professors were for me.

Akbar Sultanov is a communications specialist from Uzbekistan, who is specifically interested in transforming the way communication is practiced in developmental organizations, and make information more accessible. He intends to use his studies in the MFA to develop an open source web service for reading news materials online in a 3D environment, and explore new ways of interactive information delivery.

Since graduating in May 2023, I have focused on making a positive impact locally and globally. I have been working as chief videographer at the Barbara Geralds Institute for Storytelling and Social Impact at Ohio University, which seeks to foster collaborative storytelling and advance narrative scholarship to catalyze collective action. Simultaneously, I have teamed up with a passionate team of communicators to launch a globally-focused nonprofit organization called InitialEyes, which empowers indigenous storytellers to create opportunities for social change in their own communities. Both of these current endeavors were sparked by my MFA thesis: a qualitative research project based on participatory 360 videos created by indigenous storytellers that resulted in a responsive website (initialeyes.org). The research objective was to assess if and how producing digital stories and having access to sharing those stories could provide a tool for indigenous communities to communicate about environmental challenges in their own communities.

Zul Tinarbuko is a former Fulbright scholar from Indonesia, with a background in documentary production. He holds a terminal degree M.F.A in Communication Media Arts from the Scripps College of Communication, Ohio University. As an artist and media producer, he is interested in the issue of globalization and migration that happen around the world, he developed an interactive platform for survivors and animators so they can collaboratively produce a short animated documentary for his thesis. Zul also has been actively working as a teacher and educator at many different levels, ranging from a vocational multimedia high school in Bantul, Indonesia to an exchange teaching program in Stockholm, Sweden. Currently, he is a faculty member at The Film Department, Faculty of Arts and Design, University of Multimedia Nusantara, Tangerang, Banten, Indonesia. Besides teaching several multimedia courses, he is also in charge of the development of Arunika XR Lab. A laboratory dedicated to enhancing VR/AR, 360-degree video and interactive film in the University.

Russell James has been a professional photographer for three years, and works as a Digitech and Photographer for Overstock.com. His most recent project “Saints and Sinners” has gained significant attention. Russell has taught many wet plate collodion (Tintypes) workshops at Northwest College in Wyoming, and is passionate about teaching. Artistically, he is interested in bridging his tintype work into his commercial photography.

Nicki Mazzocca has a background in theatre and narrative filmmaking. She has worked in Chicago’s creative community since 2011 and is passionate about using new media to tell stories differently. Specifically, Nicki is interested in telling the stories of Appalachia in unique and captivating ways. An Appalachian herself, Nicki said “we often have our stories told for us or at us… I would love to use media [to tell those stories] from within.”

Marina Modi recently completed her “Women in Transformative Spaces” residency project as part of the East Africa Media Lab Collaboration. Marina has worked in public relations and broadcast journalism since 2013. She is also an experienced screenwriter. Marina currently works for Visual South Sudan as a content writer, blogger, and podcast producer. She is a media mentor in her community, and was a teaching assistant at the University of Juba.

I currently work full-time as a digital developer for a Pittsburgh-based law firm while continuing my work in interactive media art, often involving recreating historical places. For my thesis, I recreated a local historical space - a section of the Athens State Hospital also known as "The Ridges" - in virtual reality as a way to explore and learn in an immersive environment.

Chad Reich has worked in community radio for eleven years and is stepping down as News Director of KBUT in Colorado to start the MFA program. Chad is a reporter for the station too, syndicating to NPR and Pacifica news, and was previously the Program Director and Volunteer Coordinator overseeing 60+ volunteers and training new DJs and college students on internship. Chad intends to take his non-fiction storytelling skills from the medium of radio into the visual realm.

Burr Beard has had a long career in public and community radio with experience in digital audio editing for radio features series and full-length audio documentaries. He has served as General Manager and Program Director of radio stations in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, and has spent four years teaching at the college and university level in different areas of mass communications and media production.

Kellye Blosser is a senior digital strategist for Sandstorm Design in Chicago, recently managing a half-million dollar website build for a global client. Previously she was Producer/Writer for Plum Productions, working for clients such as Visa, Southwest Airlines, and McDonalds. On the flip-side, Kellye also worked for a non-for-profit organization teaching video storytelling to at-risk kids, and was the founder and Artistic Director of The Black Ship Theater Company.

Josh Crook’s feature film, Salvage, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2006. He has since written, directed and/or produced eight more features, premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival, and winning Best Picture at the HBO NY Latino International Film Festival. Josh has produced tv shows for Cartoon and MTV Networks, and is currently video content producer at Hocking College, where he uses media production as a tool for community engagement and education.

Adonis Durado is currently the Knights Fellow in the School of Visual Communication and plans to continue his education in the MFA program. Adonis has worked professionally as a designer and art director for many years. His work has won international honors from the Society for News Design, the Society of Publication Designers, and the Society of Illustrators. He also helped launch and redesigned more than a dozen magazine and newspaper titles around the world.

Versed in a broad range of art forms, Ms. Neketa Forde is a skilled Multimedia Practitioner and Educator with an MFA in Communication Media Arts, specializing in Animation and Storytelling for Social Change from Ohio University.

Ms. Forde is currently employed at the University of Guyana (UG), as the Multimedia Manager within the Department of Events, Conferences and Communications (DECCC). She oversees large scale University events of a hybrid nature, for example: the University’s Annual Convocation exercise and International Conferences. In addition, she has direct oversight all graphical materials produced for the University’s Public Relations Unit. She is also a part time lecturer for both undergraduate and graduate level courses at the University.

But Ms. Forde continues to work on her thesis project, a 2D animated docufiction series, ‘Tings Brown,’ that focuses on highlighting snippets of social inequalities that drive citizens from developing countries such as Guyana into emigrating.

Owen Lowery worked for years in the Chicago film/video community making content for Second City and Conan. He won the Best Documentary award at Tribeca Cinema’s Visionfest in 2008, and was adjunct faculty at Columbia College for four years. Owen currently works as a freelancer in motion design and video production, and authors online motion graphics courses for Lynda.com and LinkedIn Learning. He also volunteers for a rock and roll day camp for girls and transgender youth.

Delia Palmisano is the Communications and Philanthropy Director at the Outdoor Recreation Council of Appalachia, the manager and developer of the Baileys Trail System in Athens county. She has a history of working with nonprofits in the region including the Appalachian Center for Economic Networks, the Athens Photographic Project, and the Ohio’s Winding Road regional brand. Delia earned a Master of Fine Arts in Communication Media Arts from Scripps College at Ohio University in 2020, with a focus on Multimedia Interactive Storytelling for Social Change. Her award-winning documentary thesis project, “Prescription Nature, Green Time Over Screen Time,” explores the physical and mental health benefits of connecting children with the outdoors. From Cincinnati originally, she came to Athens by way of Denver, Colorado, where she owned a photography business for 12 years. In her spare time, she can be found exploring the hills of Appalachia with her husband, children, and dogs.

Terrance Reimer is a purveyor of curious visual morsels. His career started as a photojournalist, but he has been a master printer near Yosemite National Park for almost two decades. His photography exhibition The Third California recently opened at the Fresno Art Museum and was also included in a group show at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, with the museum acquiring ’Karaoke Night, 2000’ for their permanent collection. He has served as adjunct professor of photography and digital imaging at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture.