The Digital Hollywood Experience

See Past Event Photos

Watch Live Webcast Videos

Sponsorship - Click Here

Reception Sponsor

 

Tuesday, October 16, 2018

1:00 PM - 2:00 PM

Track I: Haas Conference Center, Room 172-173, Live Webcast

Women on the Creative Edge: From Cinematic Entertainment and TV to Sports, Music and VR/AR/MR: Experiences in a Changing Landscape

Jackie Guerra, Sports Engineer and CEO, Game Ready Performance

Tanna Frederick, Producer, Director, Actress, and Activist

Dr. Fiorella Terenzi, Astrophysicist, Author, Musician and FIU CASE Board Member

Joanna Popper, Global Head of VR, Location Based Entertainment, HP

Jennifer Palais, Cannes Lion Winner, Strategist, Content Director, “The Lady GaGa Experience,” “Apple - 30 Years of Mac Celebration”

Ketaki Shriram, Chief Technology Officer, Krikey

Louisa Spring, Founder, SAM-i, Moderator

 

Joanna Popper is a Hollywood and Silicon Valley executive with experience in TV, Digital, Film and VR/AR. She just joined HP as Global Lead of Virtual Reality, Location Based Entertainment. Most recently she’s been the EVP of Media and Marketing at Singularity University and VP Marketing at NBCUniversal. Joanna developed a TV show partnership with NBC and Singularity University for “The Awesome Show,” a new broadcast TV series on tech and innovation produced by Mark Burnett with host Chris Hardwick and is an Executive Producer on the show. She is advising a number of immersive computing companies focused on holograms, haptic touch, AR Cloud and video engagement as well as developing VR/AR content. She is on the oalition of the WXR Fund and was named “50 Women Can Change the World in Media and Entertainment.”

Jackie Guerra is a visionary leader in the world of fitness and athletic training. Her accomplishments as a trailblazing Olympic athlte in women’s soccer, health educator, innovator and entrepreneur have made her one of the sports and fitness industry’s most sought after advisors and trainers. Redefining the way athletes achieve and maintain their highest level of fitness, Guerra’s strategy includes creating customized transformational fitness regimens for her clients: NBA superstars including Blake Griffin, DeAndre Jordan and James Harden; West Coast MMA fighters; and Division 1 Collegiate athletes at universities including Stanford, University of Washington and Harvard. Her credentials include CSCS Certification; Strength & Conditioning Specialist; a National Strength & Conditioning Association (NSCA) Member; and Heart Rate Training Specialist. Guerra’s professional journey began during her years as a collegiate athlete at the University of Illinois: responding to the seemingly impossible rigors of her team’s intensive sports regimen, Guerra embarked on an extensive research program to improve her stamina and level of fitness. While conducting independent studies on heart rate variability and energy system development in female soccer players, her research findings became the foundation of her methodology. And while still a student, she created specialized conditioning programs for the entire University of Illinois women's soccer team; excellent preparation for doing the same for the USA Women's National Soccer Team prior to the World Championship. As a four-year NBAA letter winner who set the longest winning streak in Illinois history, Guerra led her team to win the Big 10 Conference title. She continues her legacy of mentoring collegiate athletes by managing the fitness, development, and strength-training programs for the women's varsity soccer teams at California State University Dominguez Hills. A Plano, Texas native of Puerto Rican decent, Guerra is a dual degree recipient from the University of Illinois where she graduated with bachelor’s degrees in Sports Management and Kinesiology. 2018 marks the fulfillment of a long-sought after dream for Guerra — opening the West Coast headquarters for Game Ready Performance (GRP), the elite sports performance company she founded in 2012. As CEO & Head Physiologist at GRP, Guerra and her staff operate in Southern California from their new training facility in Hermosa Beach, California.

 

Tanna Frederick is a producer, director, actress, and activist. In her decade plus collaboration with indie film icon Henry Jaglom, she has starred in and helped produce six of his feature films, including the recently released, The “M” Word, the highly anticipated, Ovation, and three of his plays, including Train to Zakopane, which just completed a  run at the Edgemar Theatre in Santa Monica. Frederick — who got her start performing at the Steben’s Children’s Theatre and then the University of Iowa — is also a mainstay of the Los Angeles theatre community.  She has starred in successful productions of A.R. Gurney’s Sylvia, Richard Nash’s The Rainmaker — which was a Los Angeles Times Critic’s Pick — and Claire Chafee’s Why Why Have a Body, which also marked Frederick’s directing debut. She and Jaglom also collaborated on the stage adaptation of his film, Always… But Not Forever and the yearlong run of his original play Just 45 from Broadway, which was later adapted to the 2012 film of the same name. An Iowan by birth and a Californian by choice, actress Frederick is passionate about both of her home states. She is also the cofounder of the Iowa Independent Film Festival and of Project Cornlight, an initiative aimed at bringing film productions to the Hawkeye State and through which she produced her upcoming film Garner, Iowa. Project Cornlight currently has two other films are currently in development. Frederick has been hard at work producing the series, DEFROST in collaboration with Randal Kleiser, a revolutionary virtual reality experience using the Oculus Rift. She has a great skill for seeking out talented and dedicated individuals for her team. In California, Frederick fell in love with surfing and in 2007, she founded Project Save Our Surf, which is dedicated to ocean conservation, the improved availability of freshwater to those in need and exposing a wide range of people to the joys of the ocean through surfing. Since 2012, Project Save Our Surf Camp has reached thousands of underserved children and teens in Southern California and Mexico, educating them on environmental issues and giving them hands-on instruction in yoga and surfing. She has been instrumental in coordinating fundraising events, camps, beach clean-ups, and carrying out the mission of Project Save Our Surf. For her work on an off stage, Frederick has received numerous awards, including Broadway World Best Actress Award for Rainmaker, Best Actress awards from the Wild Rose Film Festival, Worldfest Houston, the Fargo Film Festival and the Montana Independent Film Festival. She has been named “One to Watch” by MethodFest and received the CineCause Award, the University of Iowa’s Distinguished Alumni Award, Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Festival’s Maverick Award.

 

Jennifer Palais, CEO and Founder, Palais Consulting: Jennifer Palais started her eponymous hybrid consultancy this year in order to offer brands a one stop shop for branding, strategy, creative, production and media. Her company is currently launching onetoughbitch, an empowerment brand for women survivors of crisis and she is an advisor for the startup Canvas Art App. Previously she has worked on global and national brands such as Apple, Intel, Mitsubishi, Hyundai, The GRAMMYS and The Recording Academy working on large scale transmedia experiences and music partnerships. Most notably, she was the creative and strategic force behind the social content for the Intel-powered Lady Gaga David Bowie Tribute at the 2016 GRAMMYs, the biggest global social media day of the year, winning brand share of voice, 5 Cannes Lions and 6 Clios. She also worked at Media Arts Lab, Agency of Record for Apple, on the 30 Years of Mac celebration website and film experience that launched in 2014 winning two One Show awards, earned over 4000 organic mentions per hour for 7 days and 3500 different articles in the media.

 

Dr. Fiorella Terenzi, Astrophysicist, Author, Musician and FIU CASE Board Member: Internationally renowned astrophysicist, author and recording artist, Dr. Fiorella Terenzi has a doctorate in physics from the University of Milan. In research at the Computer Audio Research Laboratory, University of California,  San Diego, she pioneered techniques to convert radio waves from distant galaxies into sound - released by Island Records on her acclaimed CD "Music from the  Galaxies". Her award-winning CD-ROM "Invisible Universe” (Voyager Company) and best-selling books  "Heavenly Knowledge", "Musica Dalle Stelle", & "Der Kosmos ist weiblich” (Harper&Collins) weave astronomy and music, science and art into a tapestry for the senses.  She has appeared on CNN and in The Wall Street Journal, People, Time, and Glamour, and lectured at UCSD, Stanford, and MIT. Dr. Terenzi’s ground-breaking video for fashion designer Ermenegildo Zegna's Men's Collection was described by the New York Times as "Zegna's Very Big Bang”, and her high-energy show  “Let’s Get Astrophysical”, performed at the Miami Beach Centennial, featured the first Top-15 Stellar-Themed Song  Countdown combined with live DJs, musicians, dancers, and acrobats. Her FIU CASE "Physics & Ferraris” seminar showcased a variety of exotic Ferrari sports cars along with renowned inventor and former Walt Disney Imagineering R&D President, Bran Ferren to "Entertain, Educate, Enlighten, and Enthrall".  As a recording artist,  she has recorded "Quantum Mechanic" and “N.E.O" tracks for Billboard Top 20 Music Video "The Gate to the Mind's Eye with Thomas Dolby (Giant/Warner Bros. Records); Beyond Life, a Mercury Records dance/trance CD tribute to Dr. Timothy Leary (Polygram Records); "Trance Planet Vol. 5”  ( Triloka Records) and others. Terenzi's global media appearances include television and radio features on The Dennis Miller Show, Sci Fi Channel, NPR Talk of the Nation, Weekend Edition and Science Friday, Newsweek on Air, Strange universe, History Channel's "The Universe and "Ancient Aliens and others.

 

Ketaki Shriram is the Chief Technology Officer of Krikey, an Augmented Reality startup. In 2017, Shriram earned a PhD in Virtual Reality, making her one of a few people (and the youngest woman - at 25) to hold this degree. During her PhD she immersed herself in research for Google[x] on the Glass team and at Facebook’s Oculus VR. She also published a number of research studies exploring the impact of sexual harassment in virtual worlds and changes in environmental awareness and conservation behavior after a VR experience. In 2014, she co-produced a feature documentary film (TRUE SON) which follows a 22-year old’s political campaign in Stockton, CA. The film premiered at Tribeca and was acquired by Univision. As CTO of Krikey, Shriram has found the perfect balance between technical problem solving and creativity.

 

Louisa Spring - Lawyer, producer, entrepreneur, gamer, Louisa is an accomplished executive in immersive media and gaming. Louisa has worked on award winning VR campaigns for Mini-Cooper and NYTVR, the award winning game Firebird: La Peri and other PC and VR games around the world. She has moved the needle at every VR company she has worked with including facilitating deals with Intel, Oculus and Walmart with Spatialand which resulted in a successful acquisition. As a TV producer Ms. Spring has worked with Far Moor, (successfully acquired by Endemol), and William J. Macdonald, (Rome). She's a former member of the board of BAFTALA, and practiced law in London. Ms. Spring is bringing immersive entertainment and esports to locations in the UK, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau.