Media Technology · Founded 2022

Identify.Attribute.Monetize.

Trust  ·  Automation  ·  Measurement

Human & Digital delivers Identity Intelligence and data services for notable public figures in Cultural Industries — Athletes, Actors, Creators, Producers, Directors, Musicians, Voice Artists, and both the legal likenesses and fictional characters they bring to life.

Explore Services The HAND Standard →
145K+
IDs Registered · 10M+ Candidate Pool
3B+
DOI Resolutions / Month Globally
ISO
26324:2025 Aligned
Human & Digital — Identify. Attribute. Monetize.
Standards & Affiliations
C2PA CAWG EIDR IPTC DPP DOI Foundation ISO 26324:2025
Who We Serve

The Cultural Industries — in full

HAND IDs are not for corporate HR pipelines or recruitment funnels. They are career-long, globally unique identifiers for notable public figures who drive cultural value. Our scope spans every corner of the Cultural Industries — from major professional leagues and their player associations, to NCAA D1 compliance, to the global guild and union ecosystem across film, television, and music.

🏆
Sports
Professional athletes, coaches, and broadcasters across major leagues and federations globally — plus player associations, NCAA D1 compliance departments, and sports labor organizations navigating NIL, CBA negotiations, and career-long identity management.
🎬
Film & Television
Above-the-line talent — Actors, Directors, Producers, Writers, and Cinematographers (SAG-AFTRA, DGA, WGA, IATSE) — and the characters they portray.
📱
Creator Economy
Independent creators, influencers, and digital-native talent building multi-platform careers — with a portable, verifiable identity credential that travels with them.
🎵
Music
Recording artists, session musicians, songwriters, composers, and Voice Artists — across labels, independents, and the AFM.
🎮
Gaming & Virtual
Esports athletes, virtual humans, AI-generated personas, legal likenesses, and the fictional characters that drive franchise value.
🎭
Live & Performing Arts
Theatre, dance, comedy, and live performance artists — the full creative spectrum, from Broadway to touring productions worldwide.

“If you can’t identify it, you can’t operationalize or measure it.
If you can’t measure it — you can’t monetize it.”

Clyde Smith  ·  SMPTE Life Fellow  ·  Emmy Award Recipient  ·  IABM Honorary Member

What We Do

Professional Services
for the Media Supply Chain

Every service anchors to a single principle: notable public figures must be accurately identified, attributed, and protected for the full arc of their careers, globally. This is not about slowing innovation. It is about ensuring that innovation is defensible, measurable, and sustainable.

01
⬡
Identity Intelligence

Transform complex identity data into ethical, actionable insights. Named Entity Resolution, public figure analytics, and IDMaaS — grounded in Trust, Automation, and Measurement. If you can’t identify something, you can’t measure it.

Learn more →
02
⭈
HAND ID Registration

Issue globally unique, freely resolvable talent identifiers for public figures across media, entertainment, sports, and the creator economy. Built on the DOI® system — governed by the DOI Foundation as the ISO 26324 Registration Authority, running on the Handle System infrastructure created by Dr. Robert E. Kahn, co-inventor of TCP/IP.

Learn more →
03
⭗
Meta-Tagging & Data Labeling

Granular attribution of every talent, character, and rights holder in your media assets. Rights-ready IP that creates a chain of custody for human likeness — comparable to provenance systems in art and IP.

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04
⬜
Data Transformation

Convert raw media data into structured, analytics-ready formats. ETL/ELT pipelines, data warehousing, cloud migration, and BI solutions built for the media enterprise. Manual processes won’t scale.

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Ready to put this to work? Let’s Talk →
Why Now

The media industry has solved content identification.
It has never solved talent identification.

The die has already been cast: AI, automation, and synthetic media are here, and they’re transforming how stories are made, distributed, and monetized. Likeness, voice, and performance can now be replicated, recombined, and deployed at machine speed.

But the systems governing consent, attribution, and authorization are still rooted in a slower world — contracts, emails, spreadsheets, institutional memory. The result is not just confusion or inefficiency. It’s risk. Reputational risk, legal risk, moral risk.

HAND exists because automation without trust breaks systems. The future of media cannot require choosing between scale and human agency. The real failure has been trying to scale without structure.

“Standards are how values endure. Infrastructure is how ethics scale.”

Force 01 — Legislative
CA AB 1836, AB 2602, NY S.8420-A, and the federal NO FAKES Act create structural economic incentive for studios, platforms, and agencies to adopt verifiable talent IDs. This is not anticipated regulation — it is active law.
Force 02 — Labor & CBA
SAG-AFTRA/AMPTP 2026 negotiations, MLBPA/MLB CBA expiration (December 2026), and active player association engagement across NFL, NBA, NHL, and international federations create an urgent need for neutral, portable talent identifiers.
Force 03 — AI Provenance
Synthetic media and AI-generated likenesses have made talent identification a trust and authenticity crisis. C2PA can attest the chain of custody of a file. HAND attests who is in it. Provenance without resolution is a label on an empty box.
Force 04 — NCAA NIL
The NCAA NIL era has created an identity verification and compliance infrastructure gap across D1 athletic departments — with thousands of student athletes requiring verifiable, portable identity credentials for endorsement and licensing.
The window is open. Let’s Talk →
The HAND Standard

Human & Digital founded
HAND. They are distinct entities.

Human & Digital, Inc. is the for-profit media technology company that conceived, developed, and commercializes services built on the HAND identifier ecosystem.

HAND — The Universal Talent Identifier is an independent Delaware non-stock, nonprofit C corporation and 501(c)(6) trade association and standards body. It maintains the identifier registry, sets governance policy, and operates in the public interest of talent across cultural industries.

This structure is intentional. A neutral, nonprofit-governed standard earns broader adoption across competing commercial interests. H&D’s commercial services create the sustainable infrastructure that makes that standard viable in practice.

Visit hand-id.org ↗
Human & Digital, Inc.
humandigital.tech
For-Profit
↓ founded & funds ↓
HAND — The Universal Talent Identifier
hand-id.org
Nonprofit
Registry Stats
145K+
IDs Issued
3B+
DOI Resolutions/Mo.
2022
Founded
Leadership

The Team

WK
Will Kreth
Founder & CEO
Ex-Exec. Director EIDR.org · Showtime · Apple · Time Warner · Founding team & first employee, WIRED · 4 startups · 3 patents
LinkedIn
JC
John Carlucci
CTO
Ex-Sony · Clearleap (IBM) · 31 Patents · Media supply-chain, DRM, AI & identity systems · MSEE, Cornell
LinkedIn
GB
Gabriel Berger
CCO
Ex-CEO Think Analytics · 3 startup exits · Deep media technology commercial leadership
LinkedIn
WK
Wynne Kim
VP Data Policy & Standards
Ex-Microsoft · Google · DoubleClick · 1 startup exit · 2 M&A exits
LinkedIn
HM
Helen Marzec
VP Marketing Strategy
Behavioral economist · Startup ecosystem & VC associate · Angel investment & scout networks
LinkedIn
SF
Steven Frank
Compliance Advisor
Fraud & AML prevention · Streaming music (Pandora) · Co-creator, Music Fights Fraud coalition
LinkedIn
JK
Jeff F. King
Advisor & Angel Investor · Partnerships
Hollywood producer, writer & director · CAA client · Holds a HAND ID · Creative community signal and relationships
H HAND ID
RT
Renard T. Jenkins
HAND Board Chairman
Past President, SMPTE · President, HPA · Warner Bros. Discovery · PBS · Two national Emmys · Peabody Award
LinkedIn
AJB
Andrew James Bellingham
Consultant
UK broadcast & media technology specialist · EMEA market relationships · Be-Safe Technologies
LinkedIn
Get In Touch

Let’s Talk

Human & Digital works with organizations that are serious about identity infrastructure. Tell us who you are and what brought you here.