SPEAKERS
COM Day 2021
Christian Manoukian is a writer and producer at KABC-TV (ABC7). At just 21 years old, he became the youngest-ever writer/producer at Disney. In his current role, he has covered the 2018 midterm elections and 2020 presidential election, the coronavirus crisis, numerous California wildfires, and countless other major breaking international stories. As a sports producer, he has coordinated and produced enterprising coverage around all 11+ major L.A. sports teams, including special productions following the Rams in Super Bowl 53 and the Dodgers in the 2020 World Series.
Outside of journalism, Christian is also a freelance photographer. He has shot campaigns for Adidas Originals, had work featured in Harper's Bazaar, and collaborated with the New York Times.
Christian is a proud Bronco (Class of 2019), having graduated with a degree in Communication (Multimedia Journalism emphasis). He served as the president of the CPP chapter of SPJ, and also served as an undergraduate research assistant to Dr. Lauren Furey. Together, they presented co-authored research at Harvard Kennedy School in Cambridge, MA., studying the effects digital news aggregators have on young adults’ news consumption habits.
Andrea Schuppe is a Cal Poly Pomona graduate who has spent her career in the Human Resources field. She started her HR career at Warner Music Group and after two years transitioned to the Netflix recruiting team.
She spends her time partnering with executives to determine the best hires for their respective teams. Some of the groups she supports regularly are Content Development, Production Management, Legal, and Marketing which are some of the key departments that help create shows on Netflix. She is also a leader of the Latinx Employee Resource Group at Netflix called Somos and a board member on the Junior Hollywood Radio Television Society.
Matt Klein is a Director of Strategy at Sparks & Honey, a consultancy where he advises brands, nonprofits and television producers on cultural trends and their implications on business and society. With clients including Facebook, Google, MetLife and Columbia, Klein has become a trusted source in identifying societal shifts and developing future-proofing business strategies. As a Media Theorist and Cyberpsychologist, Klein focuses on our online behavior, virality, and the psycho- and sociological implications of our emergent technologies.
An award-winning author and researcher, Klein is also a contributor to Forbes critically covering social media. His past pieces explained the ethics of virtual influencers, the rise of the Creator Economy, the role of memes in language, and how social media is reflecting today’s inequality. Skeptically forecasting our future with tech, Klein’s insights also appear in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, TechCrunch, CNBC and Adweek. He can be found everywhere online as @KleinKleinKlein and his writing at Zine.KleinKleinKlein.com.
Miki Turner is currently an associate professor of professional practice at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. An award-winning photojournalist, Turner spent more than 35 years working in the media industry specializing in print, television, radio and web production. Her work has been published in more than 100 magazines and newspapers and her work has been exhibited in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Los Angeles and Hampton, Va.; and she has curated exhibitions at USC.
She is the author of two books—the best-selling journey to the woman I've come to love and tomorrow, and a 2015 prize winner in photography at Firenze Biennale in Florence, Italy. Most recently she was honored with the Black Women in Film Network Behind the Lens award for her work in journalism.
Brooke Binkowski is an award-winning reporter and debunker. Her career has taken her from Argentina to Alaska and beyond, but her first love is the U.S.-Mexico border, where she is from and which she covered for years before joining the global fight against weaponized disinformation.
Before she ran TruthOrFiction.com, Binkowski spent several years as managing editor of Snopes.com, where she took it from a mythbusting site to an anti-disinformation powerhouse. Previously, as mentioned, she covered the U.S.-Mexico border, telling the stories of migrants and the worldwide forces and pressures that force them from their homes to seek a life elsewhere.
Before that, she was a network radio reporter, mostly covering crime and breaking news on the streets of Los Angeles for the legendary KNX and Southern California Public Radio. In her spare time, which is a vanishing memory, Binkowski likes to read, garden, draw, play piano, and run with her dog.
Henry Ong is an award-winning marketing leader who spent over a decade at Marvel and Disney. He’s also an international keynote speaker, he was featured on Adweek, he’s passionate about mentoring students of color, and volunteers his time helping a non-profit organization. At Marvel, he led marketing for high-profile television shows on Netflix and ABC. At Disney, he helped build and execute global product strategies for films from Disney Animation Studios and Pixar Animation Studios.
Scott Zimbler is the Co-Founder and President of Home Brew, a Digital Marketing Creative Agency primarily based in Los Angeles, but with employees throughout the country. Home Brew was founded in 2012 and has steadily grown into a 40 person agency specializing in all types of digital marketing, including Social / Paid Media Campaigns, AR Lenses, Original Content Production, Website Development and much more. Our clients mainly consist of Film, TV, Streaming and Gaming companies. Some recent highlighted projects we’ve worked on are Nobody, Zack Snyder’s Justice League, Croods 2: A New Age, Nomadland, Promising Young Woman and Animaniacs.
Remy Merriex is the Executive Creative Director and Executive Producer with nearly 20 years experience in Brand, tech, advertising, entertainment, and interactive technology design. He specializes in design, communication and strategy, especially as it relates to new media. AR/VR, YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, Facebook, live events are all native territory to him.
Remy believes that the most powerful forms of media will soon be launched online first and that digital entertainment is about to grow up and do to TV and film what TV and film did to radio and books.
