Wednesday, October 17, 2018

2:15 PM - 3:30 PM

Track III: Herscher Hall, 3rd Floor, Room 303-304

Working in the Industry: An In-Depth Discussion with Executives and Creatives from TV, Film and Technology

Yadira Harrison, Co-Founder, Verb

Natascha French, Chief Marketing Officer, VNTANA

Vance Garrett, Vice President, Experiential Global Entertainment, Westfield

Daniel Talbott, Writer, Director, Actor, Producer

Moderator, Simone Nelson, Managing Director, The CSU Entertainment Alliance

Simone Nelson, Managing Director, The CSU Entertainment Alliance: Simone Nelson has developed and produced films, theater productions, festivals, and digital media entertainment start-ups for more than 20 years. She’s worked with, among others, the former head of Disney Studios & Theatricals Peter Schneider; filmmaker/writer Rebecca Miller and actor Daniel Day Lewis; Forensic Films; Film Arts Foundation; the Mill Valley Film Festival/California Film Institute; the Global Film Initiative; San Francisco Opera; The International Festival of Arts & Ideas and London’s famed Royal Court Theatre & Shakespeare’s Globe. More recently she produced the Berlin Film Festival award-winning documentary City of Borders; was a two-term President of Bay Area Women in Film & Media; served as head of distribution & partnerships for Webby Awards founder/filmmaker Tiffany Shlain’s Moxie Institute Film Studio;

and as managing director of the inaugural Social Change Film Festival in Bali, Indonesia. Besides her work for CSU, Simone is a producer for Richard Branson’s Virgin Disruptors and a new narrative feature film, The Last Black Man in San Francisco. Simone is also a strategic communications & creative development consultant working at the cross section of entertainment and technology. She is skilled at crafting innovative, engaging & high impact new & traditional media funding, marketing, publicity, & distribution strategies across multiple platforms & channels generating increased presence, audience share & revenue. Simone trained as an actor and has performed in venues all over the U.S. and abroad in musicals, plays and as the lead singer of several bands.  She’s taught producing, acting and directing at The Art Institute of CA–San Francisco sand has trained at New York’s American Academy of Dramatic Arts, The Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute and the British American Drama Academy in London, England.  She graduated from Northwestern University with a B.S. in Theater and has an MFA from Yale University’s Graduate School of Drama.

Yadira Harrison, Co-Founder, Verb: Yadira is a creative marketer and experiential expert who offers leadership and thoughtful solutions to brands. She co-founded Verb earlier this year to bring brands a new type of partner, offering more transparency and collaboration. Verb currently focuses on proprietary event platforms, partnerships and experiential activations for clients including CRWN Magazine, Amazon Web Services, Nielsen and Lyft. Prior to Verb, she was VP at creative agency Civic Entertainment Group, Yadira led Airbnb and eBay on numerous activations and proprietary franchises including Airbnb Open,  Airbnb Haus @ Sundance Film Festival and On The Run with eBay Motors. Prior to, she led the Advertising & Partnership Marketing team at Macy’s Parade & Entertainment Group pushing for digital and social integration, new art direction and large-scale promotional ideas to increase brand equity such as Macy’s Great American Elf Adventure and Macy’s Sizzle Showdown Grilling Guru Competition.

Natascha French is the Chief Marketing Officer of VNTANA, an industry leading augmented reality platform that allows brands to easily create interactive hologram experiences to engage consumers and generate leads. It has been used by major brands including Microsoft, Intel, Mercedes-Benz, Lexus, Pepsi and Nike to name a few. Natascha oversees the company’s marketing, sales and communications strategy. Prior to working at VNTANA, Natascha began her career has a journalist for CNN, and worked for various event marketing and communications agencies globally, including Allison+Partners, where she focused on building the startup technology division. She has a successful track record of identifying and sourcing strategic partnerships, and scaling startups through a variety of tools that embraced the latest technology. Natascha has a bachelor’s degree from Emory University in Political Science and Journalism, having prior studied at the University of California, Berkeley. She serves on the leadership council for Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, and CHLA’s Digital Marketing Committee. Natascha has been a speaker at CES, NAB, N3XT CON, Digital Hollywood, Digital LA, Frontier Tech @ SXSW and more.

Daniel Talbott is a writer, director, actor, and a Lucille Lortel and Obie Award winning producer. He is on the lit team of Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, and is the artistic director of Rising Phoenix Rep. His plays include Nick and Zoe (Arctic Group/IRT), Slipping (Rattlestick, The Side Project), Yosemite (Rattlestick), Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, America, Kuwait (Rattlestick/piece by piece, Encore), What Happened When (Rattlestick, Rising Phoenix Rep/HERE), Someone Brought Me (Quince Productions), Mike and Seth (Quince, Encore, The Side Project), Extraordinary Things (RPR), and Gray (Your Name Here). Recent directing work includes Ugly Little Sister (NYU), First Born (The Actors Studio), Thieves (Weathervane/RPR/ Rattlestick), F**king Immaculate (RPR), A Fable (Rattlestick), Gin Baby (IRT), Scarcity (Rattlestick/Hill Town Plays), Lake Water (Neighborhood Productions), Eightythree Down (Hard Sparks), Much Ado About Nothing (Boomerang), and Squealer (Lesser America). He is currently co-writing a new play with Lucy Thurber titled The Land of Ghosts and was recently commissioned by Echo Theater Company for their 2020 season. He’s directing the world premiere of Jessica Dickey’s The Convent Off Broadway in 2019, and is creating, co-writing and directing the Confession Project. His feature film What We See is in production with 4est Films, he’s a writer for OZZ with Blue Ribbon Content/Warner Bros., and is in development with Jim Parsons’ company That’s Wonderful Productions for a feature, Yosemite. He was a writer for Weinstein Company and Spike TV on The Mist, based on the Stephen King novella, and his hour-long drama pilot Summer was optioned and in development with Sonar and Killer Films. He received a 2011 Theater Hall of Fame Fellowship and was also named one of the 15 People of the Year by nytheatre.com. His recently adapted screenplay Yosemite won The Los Angeles Independent Film Festival’s “Best Feature Screenplay Award” this September. He is a graduate of Juilliard, a proud member of Echo Theater Company, and a member of the Actors Studio.

Vance Garrett is a creative producer at the convergence of art, culture, technology, commerce, and community. He is currently the Vice President, Experiential, Global Entertainment for Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield (with its international portfolio of 100+ shopping, convention, and mixed use properties) where he identifies creative content and partners and produces and presents unique experiences that foster enriched human engagement. Prior to Westfield, Vance ran his own experiential production creative agency VGP based in New York - producing and launching such projects as the Museum of Ice Cream, Refinery29’s 29Rooms, and the Hall of Magic (Clio Award) - specializing in the creative direction, treatment writing, and production of theatrical events, social experiences, and original concepts. He launched Punchdrunk’s pioneering immersive theatre production Sleep No More in New York as Supervising Producer. He employs this insider understanding of theatrical storytelling to create new experiences that invite the audience into the narrative to reciprocally participate with the environment, creating shared space for experiences that are a catalyst for building community. Other credits include Katherine Bigelow’s VR film experience The Protectors at Tribeca Film Festival’s Storyscapes, Remy Martin’s One Life/Live Them Campaign Launch with Jeremy Renner, H&M’s Conscious Collection launch, the Lantern Floating at Lincoln Center with Misty Copeland (Talent Curator for LDJ), Spring/Break Art Fair at Moynihan Station (Producer), the immersive Door into the Dark at the Tribeca Film Festival (Producer, Storyscapes Winner), PopSugar NewFronts (Stage Producer, BizBash Award Winner) the Old Vic New York gala (Director) with Darren Criss, Stephen Fry, Alan Cumming, and Jeff Goldblum, New Group’s Mercury Fur (Influencer Outreach), Black Soft’s Day of Dead video with Nicola Formichetti and Tim Richardson (Producer), Future Cinema’s New York launch of Antonioni’s Blow-Up (Co-Producer), Rock & Roll Circus at Lincoln Center (Producer), the immersive DMID Student House with Jane Lynch (Creative Producer), Fire Island Pines (Entertainment Director), Velvet Gloves Boxing (Founder).  Additional projects include Oculto Manor with Punchdrunk, the Lowline Anti-Gala, Lazarides Gallery’s NY Conor Harrington Eat and Delete show (Producer), Saint At Large (Love Ball and Black Party Director and Scenarist, Jennifer Hudson‘s New York premier, Roisin Murphy at Crobar, and others), Russian Film Week (Producer), L’Oreal/Matrix (Talent Curator), and events with the Ace Hotel, High Line Festival, Gizmodo, Douglas Elliman, Mondrian Soho, Moynihan Station/Farley Post Office, and Bowery Presents (including Morrissey, Scissor Scissors, of Montreal, Gossip and Janelle Monae). He is a graduate of Northwestern University.