Dr. Emilia Zboralska is Associate Director of Ryerson University’s Transmedia Zone, a media innovation incubator, and the Creative Director of the Ryerson Faculty of Communication and Design’s new creative event venue, HQ. Emilia is co-founder of King Squared Media, a boutique film and video company currently in post-production on its first feature film, “Thirty?”. King Squared focuses on premium, narrative storytelling through both its branded content and originals. Emilia’s academic research critically investigates entrepreneurship in the digital-first sector and provides the first benchmark analysis of gender and race across key creative roles in Canadian web series. She was recently awarded the Ryerson Gold Medal, the most prestigious faculty-wide award, for her academic and community work as well as the Communication and Culture Dissertation Prize. Her research has been published in peer-reviewed journals, and she has presented at conferences worldwide. Emilia is the former president of the Independent Web Creators of Canada, and has been an invited expert jury member for the Canada Media Fund’s Web Series Pilot Program for the last three years.