Sean Branagan

Sean Branagan established the Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship in 2011. The center offers courses, coaching and connections to encourage students to start media ventures of all kinds; to engage Newhouse alumni in tech and media startups; and build connections with emerging media and tech ventures worldwide. The Center runs the Newhouse Startup Garage, a new co-working space for student startups, student creators, and media startups and collaborators from all over the world who are working with Newhouse students to shape the future of media.

Branagan is a serial entrepreneur, interactive marketer and evangelist for innovation and startups. He spent his career in media and tech, where he still is active. Today he is co-founder and chair of Scrappy Capital, a seed fund that invests in startups in rising cities. He also coaches and advises numerous startups and venture funds.

A graduate of the Newhouse School in 1980 with a degree in magazine, Sean has started lifestyle businesses, small businesses and high-tech companies. He had a profitable exit from one and became part of an early cloud services business that bought 10 companies in 18 months and was later sold to Time Warner Cable. It is now a part of Accenture. He served as senior director of marketing for that $125 million public company in Boston’s Route 128 corridor. Along the way, he was also head of e-commerce strategy and interactive marketing for a New York City public company and corporate communications manager for a publicly traded distribution company.

Since returning to Newhouse in 2011, Branagan created and teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Media Entrepreneurship and Media Innovation. In addition, he co-founded Student Startup Madness, a national collegiate startup competition that culminated at the South By Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas, from 2012 till 2020. He launchedMedia-Nxt, a compendium of student articles about the future of media. He co-created the SXSW Pitch Co-op Internship Program, where a select group of his students discover and vet hundreds of startups, then attend the SXSW festival as fully-badged attendees. He is executive producer of theStartNow Series, an online lecture series/show focused on successful media entrepreneurs talking about their college experience. He also has several Media and Creative Entrepreneurship Outreach Programs.

Branagan was a 2020 recipient of a Fulbright Grant in Media Entrepreneurship and Innovation, working to build the creator economy in Estonia and helping eight universities across the EU establish media entrepreneurship programs. In 2023, he spoke at the Global Startup Awards Africa Summit about media opportunities in Africa and has spoken at academic and industry conferences throughout the world on the creator economy, creative and media entrepreneurship, media innovation and the future of media. He is working to democratize entrepreneurship and expand creator economy opportunities throughout Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe and in under-served communities in the US.

Branagan is a board member of the Association for Foreign Press Correspondents USA and holds official advisory board positions with several early-stage media and tech startups.

Syracuse University created and featured Branagan’s “My Syracuse University Story” on social media in 2024.