Sean Branagan

board member

Sean is an instigator, educator, serial entrepreneur, investor, advisor and evangelist for innovation and startups. He is the founder & director of the Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Syracuse University's prestigious S.I Newhouse School of Public Communications, Chief Instigator of Media-Nxt about shaping the future of media, and Chair of Scrappy Capital, a seed fund that invests in startups in rising tech cities.

Sean has spent a career in media and tech: founder of one of the first digital marketing agencies, head of marketing at an early cloud services company, partner in a boutique investment banking firm, co-founder of a search and social media marketing firm and creator of a national collegiate startup competition that culminated at the South By Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, TX, every year.

Sean is a recipient in 2020 of a Fulbright grant in Media Entrepreneurship and Innovation working to build the Creator Economy in Estonia and is helping more than eight universities across the world establish media entrepreneurship programs. He is also working with a new initiative in India to develop creative entrepreneurial thinking for hundreds of thousands of middle- and high-schoolers. In 2023, he spoke at the GSA Africa Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, about the media opportunity in Africa and is working to help those countries further develop those opportunities.

Sean is a active coach, advisor and founding board member of early-stage ventures disrupting media and other industries, and he serves as a board member for a handful of community and media-focused not-for-profits.