About

Hello! My name is Olga White and I am media professional and educator in the San Francisco Bay Area.

I moved to Cupertino, California from Moscow, Russia in 1993 and have been living in the Bay Area almost exclusively since then.

I attended De Anza College, where I got my start in television and film production the the TV/Film department. After that I transferred to San Francisco State University where I earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the Radio & Television Department.

In 2010 I moved to Los Angeles, California where I pursued a career in television production. I worked on several seasons of NBC’s “The Sing Off” and MTV’s “America’s Best Dance Crew” as a production assistant and as a contestant wrangler. I also worked as the executive assistant at 90 Miles Productions.

In 2016 I earned a Master of Arts degree in Broadcast and Electronic Communication Arts from San Francisco State University along with the Stuart Hyde Graduate Award for writing about the media and the Michelle Wolf Graduate Teaching award for excellence in pedagogy. My master’s thesis was a rhetorical analysis of the representation of Russophones in the U.S. news coverage of the 2008 Boston Bombings.

In January of 2017 I began teaching as a lecturer at San Francisco State University and in August of 2019 I also began to teach at San Jose State University.

I continue to do freelance research exploring the representation of Russian speakers in various examples of U.S. Media. Most recently I presented a case study of Netflix’s “Stranger Things” at the International Conference on Communication and Media Studies: “Identity and Power” and also at the Midwest Popular Culture Association Conference.

In addition, I have also taught at the City College of San Fransisco, at Galileo Summer Quest, as a private English and ESL tutor, and at the Magic Land Day Care.

I have two children who, two cats named Mouse and Gandalf, and a 10-to-1 ratio of plants to humans in my household.