Our Authors

Richard J. Gerrig, Ph.D., is a professor of psychology at Stony Brook University. He received his B.A. from Yale in 1980 and his Ph.D. from Stanford in 1984. Gerrig’s primary research focuses on readers’ experiences of narrative worlds. He considers both the basic cognitive psychological processes that enable readers to understand discourse and the broader consequences of readers’ experiences of being transported to narrative worlds. With Philip Zimbardo, he is the author of the introductory textbook Psychology and Life.

David Gerrold is the author of numerous television episodes including the legendary “Trouble With Tribbles” episode of “Star Trek.” He has also written for “Land of the Lost,” “Babylon 5,” “Twilight Zone,” “Sliders” and other series. He has published 45 books, including two on television production. He taught screenwriting at Pepperdine University for two decades. He has won the Hugo, the Nebula and the Locus award. A movie based on his autobiographical novel, The Martian Child, is now in production.

Mark Gerson, a New York–based entrepreneur and philanthropist, is the cofounder of Gerson Lehrman Group, 3I Members, United Hatzalah of Israel, and African Mission Healthcare—where he and his wife, Rabbi Erica Gerson, made the largest gift ever to Christian medical missionaries. A graduate of Williams College and Yale Law School, Mark is the author of the national bestseller The Telling: How Judaism’s Essential Book Reveals the Meaning of Life. Mark’s articles and essays on subjects ranging from Frank Sinatra to the biblical Jonah to the Torah and science of clothing have been published in The New Republic, USA Today, Commentary, and Christian Broadcast Network. Mark lives with his wife and their four children.

Andrew R. Getzfeld, Ph.D., received his B.A. in psychology from Vassar College, his M.S.S.W. from the University of Wisconsin, and his Ph.D. in school psychology from the University of Tennessee. An associate professor in psychology at New Jersey City University and an adjunct associate professor at New York University, Andrew’s areas of interest include eating disorders and the addictions, abnormal psychology and psychopharmacology. He has written two books: Abnormal Psychology Casebook: A New Perspective (Pearson Prentice-Hall, 2004) and Essentials of Abnormal Psychology (Wiley, 2006). Andrew loves international travel and writing, and grew up with Spider-Man and Superman, often wishing he too could bend steel with his bare hands.

Prince Ghuman started his first company while attending UC San Diego. He went on to be the founding head of marketing at BuyAutoParts, one of the earliest automotive e-commerce platforms, which was awarded the title of one of the fastest growing companies in America for three consecutive years by Inc magazine. Prince moved on to be the founding chief marketing officer of ZipZap, a cryptocurrency tech startup in San Francisco. Most recently, he held dual roles as the US director of consumer marketing and the global director of B2B marketing for OFX, a publicly-traded FinTech company handling over $100B in international payments. A contributor to major news outlets including Forbes, Refinery29, Entrepreneur, and Washington Post, he was named one of the ‘Movers and Shakers’ by the San Francisco Chronicle. He is currently a professor of neuromarketing at Hult International Business School in San Francisco.

Natasha Giardina is a lecturer and senior research assistant at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. She is currently investigating the ways young people engage with new media technologies and the kinds of online and offline spaces they inhabit. She wears her “Geek Pride” badge with honor and encourages others to come out of the server room.