Our Story

John Seigenthaler is an award-winning communications professional and recognized as one of the most skilled “storytellers” in the broadcast industry. He helps clients tell their stories creating visual and thought-provoking narratives that positively impact target audiences. Seigenthaler, a former NBC News anchor, develops strategic communications plans for corporations and high-profile C-level executives. His expertise spans crisis communications, social media strategy, media interview direction/training and video production. Seigenthaler is a former partner at Seigenthaler Public Relations, now DVL Seigenthaler, a Finn Partners Company. As an award-winning journalist, Seigenthaler anchored “NBC Nightly News Weekend” edition for almost a decade.

Lorraine Ali is a television critic with The Los Angeles Times where she covers media, culture and American Muslim issues. Ali is an award-winning journalist who before joining the Times in 2011 was a culture writer and music critic with Newsweek and a senior critic with Rolling Stone. Ali was one of a few prominent female pop music critics in American journalism who rose to prominence in the 1990s and 2000s. Her work has appeared in publications such as The New York Times, SPIN, GQ and The Hollywood Reporter, and her “West Bank Hard Core” feature was published in Da Capo’s “Best Music Writing” anthology. She’s appeared as an expert voice on radio and television programs including NPR, Oprah, Charlie Rose, CNN, BBC and Al Jazeera. Her writing awards include Best Online Feature from the New York Association of Black Journalists, an Excellence in Journalism Award from the American Arab Journalists Association, and Music Journalist of the Year from the Music Journalism Awards.

Manuel Betancourt is a Colombian-born film and television writer. He is a contributing editor at Film Quarterly, where he publishes his column, “Cineando,” all about Latin American cinema, and a regular contributor to Electric Literature, where he focuses on book-to-film adaptations. His work has been featured in The New York Times, BuzzFeed Reader, Vulture, The Los Angeles Times, Film Comment, Esquire, The Atlantic, Los Angeles Review of Books and Vice, among others. Betancourt is the former Film & TV editor at Remezcla. He is the author of “Judy at Carnegie Hall,” as well as one of the contributing writers of Chad Sell’s critically acclaimed graphic novel “The Cardboard Kingdom” and its sequel. Betancourt is a member of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association; GALECA, The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics; as well as a founding member of LEJA, Latino Entertainment Journalists Association. In 2019 he was selected to be the Writer in Residence at the Sundance Institute’s Documentary and Story Edit Lab. Betancourt holds a doctorate degree in English Literatures from Rutgers University.

Marcy Carsey teamed with Tom Werner to form Carsey-Werner Company, which produced hit shows including “The Cosby Show,” “Roseanne,” “Third Rock from the Sun,” “That 70’s Show,” and “Grace Under Fire.” In 1996 Carsey and Werner were inducted into the Hall of Fame of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and the Broadcasting and Cable Magazine Hall of Fame. In 1999 they were given the Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement, placing them in the Museum of the American Dream as two of the 20th century’s most extraordinary achievers. Carsey also received the Lucy Award from Women in Film. She began her show business career as an NBC tour guide, and became a production assistant on “The Tonight Show.” She later served as senior vice president of Prime-Time Series for ABC-TV.

Vanessa K. De Luca currently serves as Editor-In-Chief of The Root, overseeing the publication’s editorial vision and content creation across all platforms. Most recently she served as the Editor-in-Chief of ZORA magazine and helmed ESSENCE magazine. An award-winning journalist and co-author of the bestselling beauty and empowerment book Tyra Banks Beauty Inside & Out, she has been a featured guest on several national television networks, including NBC’s TODAY Show, CBS This Morning, MSNBC’s Morning Joe, CNN and more.

Hannah Giorgis is a staff writer at The Atlantic. In a recent cover story, “The Unwritten Rules of Black TV,” Hannah presented a definitive look at Black representation behind the camera, and the progress and roadblocks for creators whose voices have too long been ignored. Her essays, criticism, and reporting have appeared in publications including the New York Times magazine, New Yorker, The Guardian, Bon Appétit, and Pitchfork. She has written short stories for publications including the Lifted Brow literary journal, Spook magazine, and the Addis Ababa Noir anthology. Hannah was the 2018 Yoojin Grace Wuertz Writers of Immigration and Diaspora fellow at the Jack Jones Literary Arts retreat. Most recently she co-wrote Ida B. The Queen: The Extraordinary Life and Legacy of Ida B. Wells with Wells’ great-granddaughter, Michelle Duster, and edited the inaugural collection of essays for Shea Serrano’s Halfway Books project, about rap albums including Lil’ Kim’s Hard Core, Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly, and The Notorious B.I.G.’s Life After Death.

Herman Gray is a former radio producer and jazz announcer whose interest in media, culture, and politics is wide ranging. Gray is professor of sociology at University of California-Santa Cruz, where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in media and television studies, cultural theory and politics and black cultural studies. Gray’s research is on the role of television, media and culture in organizing, sustaining and challenging racial projects. He has published widely in scholarly journals in the areas of black cultural politics, media and television studies. His books on jazz, television, and black cultural politics include “Producing Jazz,” “Watching Race,” “Cultural Moves” and “The Sage Handbook of Television Studios,” which he co-edited.

Dana A. Heller is Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, Michigan.  Prior to that, she was Eminent Scholar and Louis I. Jaffe Professor of English at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia.  She holds a B.A. from Goddard College, an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in American literature from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.  She is the author/editor of eight books and numerous articles on topics related to television, popular culture, media, and gender and sexuality studies.  She was the recipient of Fulbright Fellowships in Russia, Bulgaria, and Belarus, and an exchange fellow in Osaka through the Japanese American Studies Fund.

Kathy Im is a director of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, where she oversees the nonprofit’s investments in its enduring commitment to journalism and media. The program, which aims to strengthen U.S. democracy by building a vibrant and independent media sector, works in three areas: professional nonprofit reporting, nonfiction multimedia storytelling, and participatory civic media. During Im’s tenure, MacArthur has contributed to numerous impactful and award-winning investigations and documentaries, and important innovations in the production and distribution of public service journalism. Im recently co-authored an essay, “Unrestricted Funding Vital for Independent Journalism,” for the American Press Institute. She is also a Leadership Greater Chicago Fellow, a civic program for Chicago leaders, and a board member of Media Impact Funders, a national association for journalism and media funders.

Michael Isip is President & CEO of KQED, the San Francisco Bay Area’s PBS and NPR media resource. Isip has a quarter century of media experience and has played a critical role in KQED’s growth and transformation into a multimedia organization. He joined KQED in 2001 as a Television Executive Producer and has served in a number of senior roles, including Senior VP & Chief Content Officer and Executive VP & Chief Operating Officer. Prior to KQED, Isip led production at KVIE Public Television, Sacramento. He started his career at WLS-TV, Chicago. Isip is a senior fellow for the American Leadership Forum — Silicon Valley and serves on the boards of Public Radio Exchange, American Documentary Inc., Joint Venture Silicon Valley, and the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. Isip has a B.A. from Cornell University and a J.D. from DePaul College of Law.

Carrie Lozano is the Director of the Sundance Institute’s Documentary Film and Artist Programs, and is an award winning documentary filmmaker and journalist. Prior to Sundance, she was director of the International Documentary Association’s Enterprise Documentary and Pare Lorentz funds, where she supported more than 60 diverse films and filmmakers at the intersection of documentary and journalism. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, and serves on the board of ProPublica and on the advisory boards of PBS Frontline and U.C. Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism where she is an alum. Lozano was previously an executive at Al Jazeera America and a senior producer of the network’s investigative series Fault Lines. Her recent film credits include The Ballad of Fred Hersch and Prognosis: Notes on Living.

Mike Monello is a true pioneer when it comes to immersive storytelling and innovative marketing. In the late 1990s, Monello and his partners at Haxan Films created The Blair Witch Project, a story told across the burgeoning internet, a sci-fi channel pseudo-documentary, books, comics, games, and a feature film, which became a pop-culture touchstone and inspired legions of “found-footage” movies in its wake. It forever changed how fans engage with story and how marketers approach the internet. Inspired by the possibilities for engaging connected fan cultures and communities online, Monello co-founded Campfire in 2006. There, he leads an agency that has developed and created groundbreaking participatory stories and experiences for HBO, Amazon, Netflix, Cinemax, Discovery, National Geographic, Harley-Davidson, Infiniti, and more. Campfire won Small Agency Campaign of the Year via AdAge in 2013 and Small Agency of the Year via Online Marketing Media and Advertising Awards in 2012, and has been awarded top honors at the Cannes Lions Festival, Clios, One Show, MIXX, and the Emmys. Monello regularly speaks at high-profile events such as Advertising Week, SXSW, Digital Hollywood, and more.

Nicholas Quah is the podcast critic at New York Magazine’s Vulture and a contributing critic at NPR’s Fresh Air. One of the earliest journalists dedicated to covering the podcast industry, he is also the founder of Hot Pod, widely considered to be a leading trade newsletter covering the podcast business, which was sold to Vox Media. Originally from Malaysia, he has a B.A. from Wesleyan University, an M.A. from the University of Chicago, and was a Visiting Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 2017.

Kent Rees is an industry-leading digital and content marketing strategist. He is currently the general manager and chief marketing officer for FAST Studios, a company that owns and operates ad-support streaming TV networks.  Prior to that, he was the Chief Marketing Officer for Pop TV and the EVP and General Manager of Pivot.  Mr. Rees went to NYU Film School and has been an adjunct professor at Emerson College since 2018.

Mark Ruffin is the program director of the Real Jazz channel on Sirius/XM Satellite Radio.  Before that he spent over 25 years as a fixture in jazz broadcasting and journalism in Chicago, winning two Emmy Awards for his efforts to bring stories about jazz to television on WTTW-TV.  Mr. Ruffin worked as the jazz editor for Chicago Magazine and has written hundreds of articles on jazz, broadcasting and African-American culture.  In 2020, Mr. Ruffin released his first book, Bebop Fairy Tales: A Historical Fiction Trilogy on Jazz, Intolerance and Baseball.

Bonnie Turner is a veteran film and television writer and producer with more than forty years of experience. She began in Atlanta producing for Ted Turner and was present at the launch of CNN. In the mid-eighties she wrote and produced for “Saturday Night Live.” During her tenure, her work introduced many comical words and phrases into the pop zeitgeist. Turner wrote five successful films for Paramount Pictures including the feature-length version of “Wayne’s World,” which set a comedy box office record. She then wrote and produced for the Carsey-Werner company where she created “3rd Rock From The Sun” and “That ’70s Show.”

Diana Williams has a wide range of experience in the entertainment industry. She develops IP and produces creative content for distribution across storytelling media. Throughout her career she has been at the forefront of working with emerging and established talent to ensure that all voices are included in an ever-evolving industry.

She is the co-founder of Kinetic Energy Entertainment, a multi-media development and production company. Kinetic Energy’s project slate includes the cross-platform storyworld of The Gatecrashers, Sermons Beyond Sunday podcast based on Ureeka/1863 Ventures focus on entrepreneurs of color (the New Majority), epic fantasy Crimson, and recipe-memoir Adventures in Starry Kitchen.

An award-winning producer, she produced the critically acclaimed feature film Our Song, which earned her a nomination for an Independent Spirit Award in the Producer category. Other credits include documentaries Room 237, the Emmy© award-winning Sylvia Drew Ivie, Student Academy Award©-nominated Another First Step, Industrial Light & Magic: Creating the Impossible, Method to the Madness of Jerry Lewis, and Dear Mom Love Cher.

In addition to producing, Diana has a wide range of experience in the entertainment industry. She was the Creative Development and Franchise Producer at Lucasfilm within the Story Group, the team responsible for developing and maintaining narrative cohesion and connectivity throughout the Star Wars universe. While at Lucasfilm, Diana developed film and tv (including Star Wars Rebels, Rogue One), mobile and console videogames (including 2015’s Battlefront), publishing (Marvel’s Star Wars comics and novel expansions), and was a member of the team that launched ILMxLAB, an immersive entertainment and mixed reality laboratory, with projects including Vader Immortal (writer: David Goyer), Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire for The Void, and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Academy Award© winning experience Carne y Arena. She was also a production consultant for BET on Let the Church Say Amen (director: Regina King), Gun Hill Road (creator/director: Reggie Rock Bythewood), and Untitled Kenya Barris Project (creator: Kenya Barris). She also held the position of Executive Vice President of Content at MWM.

Diana began her career in production as an Assistant Director and is a current member of the Directors Guild of America (DGA) and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). Diana is also a Sundance New Frontier fellow and advisor and is currently the Chairperson of the Interactive Board for the Peabody Awards (this is a newly formed board to be announced early summer 2021). She is on the Strategic Planning Committee of The National Academy of Sciences’ Science and Entertainment Exchange; the advisory committee for the Royal Shakespeare Company/Digital development (Dream: A Midsummers Night Experience just announced) and Future of Film; and the boards of Diverso (a non-profit organization by students for students, dedicated to empowering the underrepresented storytellers of the next generation), The Overlook Film Festival, and Here/No Proscenium Summit. She is also a member of the Auntie Sewing Squad, a volunteer network of people across the U.S. that sew and distribute masks for free to First Nations, immigration organizations, and local communities in need.

Diana is a graduate of Georgetown University and currently resides in Los Angeles, CA.

Recent speaking engagements:

• 2021 Vancouver International Film Festival Keynote Address
• 2021 Valence: “The New Black History of Ownership”
• 2020 Carla: “Risk, Financing, and Inclusion”
• 2020 Future of Film – Rebels of Storytelling: “Worldbuilding, Franchises, and Authentic Storytelling” video and audio on Soundcloud

Sergio Peçanha is an Opinion columnist and a graphics editor for The Washington Post. He uses visual elements such as illustrations, cartoons, maps, information graphics and videos to tell stories in print and digital media. Sergio writes and designs his own stories and focuses on pieces that generate empathy, amuse and explain complex concepts. Before joining the Post, he was a visual journalist at The New York Times for more than a decade, mostly coordinating graphics and multimedia coverage for the International desk. His work has been recognized multiple times by the Society for News Design and the Malofiej infographics awards, in Spain, Communication Arts, Society for Publication Design and Pictures of the Year. Sergio began his career in his hometown of Rio de Janeiro and has a B.A. in journalism and a masters degree in illustration.

Lars Bastholm is an experienced creative leader whose career spans brands (Google), traditional agencies (Ogilvy) and digital agencies (AKQA). He has managed large teams across multiple geographies and cultures as well as built teams from scratch. He is passionate about technology, brands and storytelling. His work as a creative director has garnered many international awards, including 3 Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. Lars has contributed to four books about the digital advertising industry published by Taschen, and he is a member of The International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences as well as The Producers Guild of America.

Lars is a film buff who also enjoys karaoke, science fiction, and fine cuisine. He is currently the Chief Creative Officer at Story House Egmont in Copenhagen.

Jay Bushman writes for many kinds of media, working at the intersection of traditional and emerging formats. He won an Emmy Award for his work as a writer and transmedia producer on ‘The Lizzie Bennet Diaries,” an interactive adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, and was the co-creator of the interactive sequel show, “Welcome To Sanditon.”

Jay is the author of “Novel Advice: Practical Wisdom for your Favorite Literary Characters.” He’s contributed to interactive campaigns and experiences for Disney, Paramount, Google, Microsoft, and Netflix. For his experimental work in social media storytelling — including writing one of the first Twitter novels — he was dubbed as “The Epic Poet of Twitter.” by New Scientist Magazine, and as an “Enterprising Fabulist” by Vanity Fair.

Aymar Jean “AJ” Christian is an associate professor of communication studies at Northwestern University. His first book, Open TV: Innovation Beyond Hollywood and the Rise of Web Television on New York University Press, argues the web brought innovation to television by opening development to independent producers. His work has been published in numerous academic journals, including the International Journal of Communication, Television & New Media, Social Media & Society, Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, among others. He has juried television and video for the Peabody Awards, Gotham Awards, and Tribeca Film Festival, among others. His work has been recognized by the Field & MacArthur Foundation (Leaders for a New Chicago, 2019), Filmmaker Magazine (25 New Faces of Indie Film, 2018) NewCity (Chicago’s Film Hall of Fame, 2020), Chicago magazine (New Power List, 2021).

Dr. Christian co-founded OTV | Open Television, a research project and platform for intersectional television. OTV programs have received recognition from HBO, the Television Academy (Emmy Awards), Webby Awards, Streamy Awards, Gotham Awards, among others. Its programming partners have included the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Sundance Institute, and the city of Chicago, along with numerous galleries, community organizations, and universities.

Building on the success of OTV, he co-founded OTV Studio with Stephanie Jeter and Lilly Wachowski. OTV Studio is an incubator for intersectional film & television, developing artists and producing their short-form content to accelerate discovery and long-form development with an array of mission-aligned studios, production companies, and institutional partners.

He received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania.

Katerina Cizek is a Peabody and two-time Emmy-winning documentarian. She is the artistic director and co-founder of the Co-Creation Studio at MIT Open Documentary Lab. At the studio, she wrote (with Uricchio et al.) the world’s first field study on co-creating media called Collective Wisdom (forthcoming with MIT Press). For over a decade, Cizek worked as a documentary director at the National Film Board of Canada, transforming the organization into a world-leading digital hub, with the projects HIGHRISE and Filmmaker-in-Residence. Both community-based and globally recognized, these two ground-breaking long-form digital projects garnered international awards and critical acclaim. Cizek is a member of the Directors’ Guild of Canada, has served as an advisor at the Sundance Institutes’ New Frontier Lab and Stories of Change Program as well as CPH:DOX and ESoDoc. She is a founding member of the Guild of Future Architects, a member of the editorial collective at IMMERSE.

Yasmin Elayat is an Emmy-award winning immersive director, United States Artists 2020 Fellow, and Co-Founder at Scatter, an immersive company pioneering Volumetric Filmmaking. Yasmin directed Scatter’s Zero Days VR (Sundance 2017) a documentary about cyber warfare and the Stuxnet virus, which won the Emmy for Original Approaches: Documentary. Yasmin is the co-creator of 18DaysInEgypt, which was lauded as one the Moments of Innovation in Participatory Documentary. Yasmin is a co-director of The Changing Same trilogy. Episode 1 premiered at Sundance 2021 and won “Best Immersive Narrative” at Tribeca Festival. Yasmin’s work has won multiple awards and exhibited at various festivals including Sundance, Tribeca, SIGGRAPH, Festival de Cannes, and the World Economic Forum.

Navid Khonsari, is the co-founder of  iNK Stories, an award-winning studio creating impact-forward original work across games, mixed reality (VR/AR) and immersive experiences, and has forged a new hybrid of documentary-games: ”Verite Games.” Drawing upon personal history Khonsari created 1979 Revolution: Black Friday, which received the industry’s top honors: a BAFTA, Facebook Game of the Year, Tribeca FF Storyscape, among others, and was recognized by UNESCO as a digital solution for peaceful conflict resolution. Khonsari is credited with having ushered in the current wave of contemporary AAA video games, such as Grand Theft Auto, Max Payne, Red Dead Revolver, and The Warriors, up to the recent Resident Evil: Biohazard. He is an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins, and guest lectures at Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Duke, Northwestern in Qatar, White House, UN, Sundance and more.

Opeyemi Olukemi is the executive director of the Center of Documentary Studies (CDS), anchored in Durham, North Carolina. Throughout her career as an interactive producer, funder and public programmer, Olukemi has created spaces and pipelines for interdisciplinary artists, communities, and creative teams to experiment and create meaningful innovative content. Olukemi has previously led teams at POV Spark, served as the Senior Director of Interactive Programs for Tribeca Film Institute and has produced projects for ScrollMotion. Olukemi has served on numerous international festival juries and has mentored through IDFA’s Doc Academy, New Museum’s NEW INC, Oculus’ VR for Good, Sundance’s New Frontier Lab and the Venice Biennale College Cinema, and was also an assistant professor of Integrated Media at Brooklyn College’s Barry R. Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema. Olukemi is a proud Rockwood (Ford Foundation) JustFilms Fellow.

Dan Pacheco holds the Peter A. Horvitz Chair of Journalism Innovation at the Newhouse School of Public Communications and is a pioneer in the use of virtual reality for journalism. In 2014 he started and co-produced The Des Moines Register’s Harvest of Change VR project for the Oculus Rift, the world’s first large-scale use of virtual reality by a commercial news organization. Harvest of Change earned an Edward R. Murrow Award in 2015 for its innovative use of 360-degree video for virtual reality.

Previously, Pacheco spent 20 years in the trenches of digital publishing everywhere from Fortune 500 companies to startups. He started his career as an online producer for Washingtonpost.com, where he produced Interact, one of the first online news communities. As a principal product manager at America Online, he oversaw some of the internet’s first truly global community products. In 2005, after pioneering the first implementation of a social networking platform at a U.S. newspaper, he received a Newspaper Association of America’s “20 Under 40” award. And in 2007, he received a Knight News Challenge grant to build a democratized publishing service that evolved into an eBook platform.

Pacheco’s areas of emphasis are XR, data journalism and data visualization, and the exploration of emerging media platforms. He lives in Syracuse, NY with his partner and puppy.

Kamal Sinclair, is making the world more beautiful as the Executive Director of the Guild of Future Architects and artist at Sinclair Futures. She served as an External Advisor to the MacArthur Foundation’s Journalism & Media Program, a Creative Advisor to For Freedoms (the largest collective art project in US history), a member of Sharon Chang’s Family Office (Dream Office of Imaginary Friends) and as a board member of MIT’s Center for Advanced Virtuality and Eyebeam.

Previously, was the Director of Sundance Institute’s New Frontier Labs Program for seven years, which supports artists working at the convergence of film, art, media and technology. She partnered with Chief Curator, Shari Frilot, in the development and platforming of landmark projects in the evolution of story, including experimentations with bio media, XR, iOT and AI as storytelling mediums.

During that period, she consulted for the Ford Foundation’s JustFilms program on a multi-year research projects aimed at furthering equality in emerging media, which resulted in the landmark work “Making a New Reality,” which has been published through Immerse.news and sparked a four year speaking tour at some of the most prestigious tech and media companies, philanthropic organizations, academic institutions, and social justice community initiatives. Currently, the research is informing a developing documentary (The Radical Imagination Project), a book and a game/toolkit for the field of emerging media practitioners and organizations.

Sundance Institute was both a resource and inspiration for the research, then an early adopter of specific recommendations that emerged from the research regarding the need to break silos between art, science and technology. Currently, she is consulting their collaboration with Stanford University’s Institute for Diversity in the Arts to explore the future of identity in an AI integrated future at the intersection of these fields.

Johns Hopkins University’s Immersive Storytelling and Emerging Technology Center and NYU Tisch’s Future Imagination Fund engaged Sinclair in consulting projects to translate the learning from the research into programs and centers within their organizations to democratize the imagination of the future in a just and equitable manner, as well as optimize human creativity as we design social and cultural systems for exponential technologies. Both university initiatives are in exciting development phases to implement the strategic plans developed during her engagement.

Sinclair got her start in emerging media as an artist and producer on Question Bridge: Black Males. At Question Bridge, where she and her collaborators launched a project with an interactive website and curriculum; published a book; exhibited in over sixty museums/festivals; won International Center for Photography’s 2015 Infinity Award for New Media; and was archived at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Earlier in her career, Kamal was a Transmedia Producer at 42 Entertainment and worked on projects such as Legends of Alcatraz for J.J. Abrams, Mark of the Spider-Man and Random Acts of Fusion; as Principal at Strategic Arts Consulting, and the Artistic Director of Universal Arts. Her career began as a cast member of the Off-Broadway hit STOMP.

Benjamin Stokes is a civic media scholar, game designer, and director of The Playful City Lab. He is also an Assistant Professor in the School of Communication, and at the AU Game Center. Previously, he co-founded Games for Change, the movement hub for advancing social change with games. At the MacArthur Foundation prior to academia, Benjamin was a program officer in their portfolio on Digital Media and Learning. Benjamin has also worked at the UC Berkeley School of Information as a postdoctoral scholar in data science. Design experience in civil society includes leading teams at NetAid/Mercy Corps in global citizenship education. His new book is Locally Played: Real-World Games for Stronger Places and Communities (MIT Press, 2020).

Sara Thacher is a Creative Director and Senior R&D Imagineer at Walt Disney Imagineering. In this role, she works with engineers, computer scientists, architects, artists, and inventors to fashion new technology into revolutionary guest experiences. Sara has worked on numerous projects with a focus on creating experiences that invite guest participation, interaction, and play. Her work at Imagineering R&D includes leadership on the upcoming Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser two-day immersive experience and the TEA Award winning Haunted Mansion: Ghost Post. Previously, she served as Executive Producer and Designer at Nonchalance where she co-created the groundbreaking experience, The Jejune Institute.

An alumnus of the Sundance Screenwriting Lab, Lance Weiler is recognized as a pioneer in mixing storytelling and technology. Wired magazine named him “one of 25 people helping to reinvent entertainment and change the face of Hollywood.” He was nominated for an International Emmy in digital fiction for his work on Collapsus: The Energy Risk Conspiracy. His collaboration with David Cronenberg entitled, Body/Mind/Change premiered at the TIFF Lightbox and went on to win the American Alliance of Museums’ Jim Blackaby Ingenuity Award. Lance co-created Frankenstein AI, a multi-year project that explores humanity’s relationship to artificial intelligence through storytelling, performance and immersion. Frankenstein AI was an official selection of the Sundance Film Festival and later was commissioned by the National Theatre’s Immersive Storytelling Studio and IDFA Doc Lab. Weiler’s most recent work entitled, Where There’s Smoke had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. The 1,400 sq ft experience became the first off-site installation to ever be staged at the festival. IndieWire wrote “Over 100 movies screened at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, but one of its best offerings lets you walk inside the frame and experience a story from the inside out.” Lance is currently touring Where There’s Smoke and is developing the project into a limited TV series and YA novel.

Lance is a Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia University School of the Arts where he is jointly appointed in Film and Theatre. He co-founded the School of the Arts’ Digital Storytelling Lab and since 2013 has served as its director leading and shaping the lab’s vision and programming.