I was born in the Soviet Union just before it collapsed—a so-called “last generation” Soviet kid. More specifically, I was born in Baku, Azerbaijan, though I don’t consider myself Azeri. My family spoke Russian, and as the Nagorno-Karabakh War escalated, we fled to Moscow without official permission. At the time, the Soviet government still controlled internal migration, so we lived for years as unofficial residents—effectively undocumented in our own country.
Eventually, my dad’s job relocated us to Cupertino, California. In Silicon Valley, I grew up surrounded by other immigrant kids trying to reconcile two very different worlds: old-world expectations at home, and American liberalism at school. We learned to code-switch before we even had a word for it. Even after all these years, I’ve never felt fully Azeri, Russian, or American. That in-between space—that cultural friction—is where my thinking lives.
My academic path wasn’t linear. I struggled in high school and started at community college with no clear direction. But a single journalism class changed that. I ended up transferring to San Francisco State University, where I earned a B.A. in Radio & Television Production and later an M.A. in Broadcast and Electronic Communication Arts. I won awards for both my teaching and media writing, and—somewhat improbably—I became a lecturer before I even finished my degree.
In between, I worked in reality TV (yes, that kind) and briefly in tech recruiting (which I hated). But the classroom kept calling me back. For eight years, I taught media and communication at California public universities, navigating the broken economics of higher ed from inside the adjunct system. Eventually, I realized I needed a terminal degree—not just for job security, but to do the kind of scholarship I cared about.
Currently, I’m a Ph.D. student in Media Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. My research focuses on memes—not as jokes, but as political and cultural artifacts. I study how memes circulate ideas, identities, and emotions, especially in the context of populism, mental health, and digital propaganda. I’m interested in what these tiny, fast-moving bits of media reveal about how we understand the world—and each other—online.
Olga White 