An exploration of culture and identity through a fusion of skateboards with traditional Iranian art.

Art has the ability to transcend national borders and language barriers, giving it a unique power to generate empathy. Any piece of art has this power, whether it be a painting, a sculpture, a photograph — or a skateboard deck.

While I was earning my...

Every summer from the time he was seven through 16 years of age, Ernest Owens would travel from his hometown of Houston to Marianna, Arkansas, where he would spend three months with his grandmother. She had grown up in the small town just an hour and a half east of Little Rock and “knew her way around town,” Owens said. She could walk into any room — any situation — and leave with a new friend. This is what she wanted for her grandson.

Emmanuel Martinez freely admits to something that would have been shocking in the world of journalism not too long ago: He’s good at math.

Dylan Valley was in Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport coming back from a fellowship conference in Berkeley, California to his hometown of Cape Town when he received an email that his virtual reality film, Azibuye – The Occupation had gotten into the Sundance Film Festival. “I started dancing in the terminal,” Valley said.

Harry Vaughn’s desk was covered with notes for his introduction and the question-and-answer session that would follow the 2020 Sundance Film Festival screening of Whirlybird by documentarian and fellow USC Annenberg graduate Matt Yoka. Vaughn (MA, specialized journalism (the arts)) and Yoka, (MA, specialized journalism) had a lot in common beyond their degrees. While they hadn’t met, or even known about each other before Yoka’s documentary was accepted into the festival, they were both native Los Angelenos, later learning they even attended high schools across the street from each other in La Cañada.

Growing up in the post-revolutionary Iran of the early 1980s, Mandana Mellano wasn’t exposed to advertising, particularly Western advertising, until she and her family traveled outside their hometown of Tehran when she was six. Vacationing in Istanbul, she marveled at the “amazing world” of billboards and television spots. “I think the complexity of living in a society that is very much controlled had a lot to do with my wanting to study sociology and communication as a whole,” said Mellano, who graduated in 2001 with a master’s in communication management. “It created the spark.”

With more than half of Americans listening to podcasts and an estimated $1 billion in annual revenue expected by 2021, USC Annenberg and the Sacks Family Foundation are investing in the future of podcasting. Leveraging this explosive growth, the Luminary Fellowship program hopes to infuse the podcast industry with fresh voices and perspectives.

Sophomore Julio Martinez never imagined — or expected — that he would be studying communication at USC Annenberg. Then, two years ago, in the summer before his senior year at Valley Christian High School, Martinez was invited to be one of 26 students for the inaugural Annenberg Youth Academy for Media and Civic Engagement program, otherwise known as AYA.