10 Years of Media Innovation
March 23 - 27, 2026
Sponsored by the Ogden Newspapers Seminar Series
Meet the Spring 2026
Innovators-In-Residence
The WVU Reed School of Media and Communications welcomes back the Innovators-in-Residence program for Spring 2026. This extends a decade of innovation led by the School, in which top media professionals leading change in the industry come to the WVU campus to create new curriculum, experiment with new technology, and equip students and regional media with new skills to tackle current—and anticipated—challenges in the industry. This semester’s IIR program will focus on AI and engage leaders in journalism and strategic communication who are exploring new tools, experiments and practical use cases for AI in journalism and strategic communications. The Innovators-In-Residence program will include virtual and immersive in-person learning and will expose students to thought-provoking conversations and experimentation as well as equip students with essential skills, knowledge and strategic thinking to launch their professional lives.
Ryan Restivo
Ryan Restivo was a 2022-23 Reynolds Journalism Institute fellow who created the YESEO app, a free Slack app that has been installed in over 600 workspaces and helps journalists with SEO best practices. The tool has assisted over 18,000 stories since launch across newsrooms in the United States, Canada and globally, reducing the time it takes to come up with that relevant headline, the right keywords and get work seen and read.
YESEO was a finalist for the 2024 Online Journalism Awards category Excellence in AI Innovation. YESEO partnered with The Oglethorpe Echo, a news-academic partnership at the University of Georgia, in the JournalismAI Innovation Challenge supported by the Google News Initiative.
Ryan has over 15 years of experience in digital media and is a 2008 graduate of Marist College in New York.
Dan Fisher
After graduating from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Dan worked in film and television production in Los Angeles, eventually moving to Chicago when he joined The Oprah Winfrey Show as lead creative editor, and took home an Emmy Award in the process.
In 2011, he launched Bottle Rocket Media to bring that same level of storytelling and craft to brands and organizations. They produce everything from commercials and branded content to documentaries, educational videos, and beyond. In 2023, they expanded with a digital marketing arm focused on SEO, SEM, paid media, and programmatic, providing more opportunity to help their clients connect with their audiences.
Erica Osher
Erica Osher is NPR's Vice President of AI Labs. In this role, she oversees NPR's AI strategy as a business leader driving NPR's exploration of opportunities related to artificial intelligence. Osher is focused on developing and leading programs that build trust, augment NPR team capacities and innovate with emerging AI tools in support of NPR's public service mission.
Prior to joining NPR, she was Vice President of Sponsorship Products and NPM Creative at National Public Media LLC (NPM). While at NPM, Osher was a business lead in a cross-functional team that founded and developed NPR's AI Labs initiative, co-writing NPR's AI guidelines and developing pilot programs.
Ashton Marra
Ashton Marra joined the college’s faculty in August of 2018, where she teaches news writing, video storytelling and community-focused journalism. Ashton came to the college with a decade of professional experience in both public and commercial media newsrooms in New York City, Ohio and West Virginia, and her reporting has appeared nationally on NPR and PBS, as well as “Good Morning America,” where she worked with correspondents across the country to produce video news stories in the field and in the studio.
She served as the assistant news director for the statewide public television and radio network West Virginia Public Broadcasting and as its lead political reporter, hosting and producing the network's flagship television program “The Legislature Today.” While working in public media, Ashton was also the producer and host of a number of radio programs as well as original podcasts. She was twice named the Associated Press of the Virginias Best Reporter. She was also the Executive Editor for the national Edward R. Murrow award-winning digital newsroom 100 Days in Appalachia, and has worked on AI programming with Trusting News.