Rajat Sharma is a PhD candidate at the School of Communication, Hong Kong Baptist University. His research primarily focuses on decoloniality, anti-imperialism, and perversions to statist ideologies in mainstream television and films. Having finished his studies as a filmmaker, his work oscillates between praxis and theory.Max Beck is a strategist, academic, and educator specializing in marketing, digital transformation, and influencer management. He is the founder of RealFluencers, a pioneering initiative in Latin America that combines research, practice, and education to professionalize the influencer industry. He also serves as the lead professor of the first influencer marketing management diploma in Latin America, created in partnership with CESA Business School in Bogotá. Max is a long-term lecturer at CESA, where he teaches marketing and digital strategies. Internationally, he has been a visiting professor (Berlin International University of Applied Sciences) and guest lecturer for branding and digital business at various universities including New York University (NYU); Cass (now Bayes) Business School at City, University of London; University of Limerick; Rollins College - Orlando; and S P Jain School of Global Management. He holds two master’s degrees in international business administration from ESCP Europe (Paris–London–Berlin) and an MBA from Universidad de Los Andes. He is also certified in digital marketing strategies by Columbia University, New York. Through his work, Max bridges academic research and industry practice, offering a comprehensive vision of how marketing and communication evolve in the digital age. His teaching and thought leadership position him as a key reference in the study and professionalization of influencer marketing in Latin America.Fernando García-Cruz is an educator, consultant, and researcher specializing in storytelling, entrepreneurship, and creative innovation. With more than nineteen years of experience teaching entrepreneurship and innovation, he bridges the worlds of narrative design and business development. His research explores how storytelling frameworks influence entrepreneurial ecosystems and digital media, with a focus on transmedia comics, web platforms, and the intersection between creative content and startup methodologies. As both a creator and advisor, Fernando applies lean startup principles to narrative production, developing the concept of the minimum viable story as a tool for testing and scaling creative intellectual properties. His work highlights the convergence of cultural industries, technology, and narrative influence in the global creative economy.Vic Jiménez-Rodríguez is professor of innovation and entrepreneurship at Tecnológico de Monterrey and a doctoral researcher at Durham University. His work explores how entrepreneurs craft and shape narratives, blending storytelling, AI, and cultural entrepreneurship to understand the fine line between vision and authenticity.Erick Behar-Villegas is dean of business at Whitecliffe University of Applied Sciences Berlin in Germany and professor of behavioral economics at Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico. He is an entrepreneur in the food business and a fiction writer. https://www.erickbehar.com.Ralf M. Ruthardt has founded several start-ups. His innovations in the automation of commercial business processes are used in medium-sized companies and international corporations. Since 2024, Ruthardt has been publishing on social issues and supporting companies with strategic challenges.Emebet A. Worku was born in Adama, Ethiopia. She holds a degree in architecture and urban planning from Ethiopia, complemented by an MBA from Germany. She has contributed to the construction of the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia, a landmark project that was the country’s first high rise and the third-tallest building in East Africa at the time.Charlotte Addison is a Patsy Boyer scholar and holds a master’s degree in communication studies from Colorado State University. She studies films and television, feminist media, and media industries.Song Abel Han is a fiction writer and PhD candidate in comparative literature at Cornell University. His research explores global Chinese literature, cultural studies, and media, with a focus on economic humanities, technologies, and Sinophone–Southeast Asian connections. His dissertation examines aesthetic and economic experiments in the wake of “rising Asia,” with particular attention to special zones and the new social relations they generate. His writing has appeared in the Journal of World Literature, Oxford Bibliographies, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, and elsewhere.Patrick Vonderau is a professor in media and communication studies at the University of Halle, Germany, and an affiliate professor in cinema studies at Stockholm University, Sweden. He currently coleads a government-funded research project on issues of remuneration in music streaming (2021–2025, with Jana Costas). Recent book publications include the coedited Energy Imaginaries: Public Relations and the Moving Image (forthcoming 2025, with Marina Dahlquist) and the coauthored Spotify Teardown: Inside the Black Box of Streaming Music (MIT Press, 2019). Vonderau is cofounder of the NECS-European Network for Cinema and Media Studies.Xiao Liu is a PhD student in the Department of Performance Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. Her research lies at the intersection of mobility studies, labor migration, and art making in contemporary South China. She holds an MA in comparative literature from Fudan University and a second MA in performance studies from NYU Tisch.
