Heroes of Reality

Maura Welch is VP Marketing for Together Labs, a leader in technologies that empower people to connect, create and earn in the metaverse. Prior, Maura led marketing at TripAdvisor and was on the founding team for WeeWorld, a top 10 tween/teen site and early social metaverse platform. Earlier, Maura helped to found other innovative startups working with top brands, entertainment, and sports organiz...

Terrence Real is an internationally recognized family therapist, speaker, and author. He founded the Relational Life Institute, offering workshops for couples, individuals, and parents along with a professional training program for clinicians to learn his Relational Life Therapy methodology. He is the bestselling author of I Don't Want to Talk About It, How Can I Get Through to You?, and The New R...

Grant Haseley is the Executive Director and Founder of Wagyu Games, creators of Undead Blocks, the world’s first AAA play-to-earn FPS zombie shooter. Grant brings over an unparalleled passion and vision for gamer empowerment and digital asset ownership that relate to his days working in Banking. Grant was most recently a Vice President for M&T Bank specializing in Data Analytics and previously wor...

Sonya Haskins is a respected voice in the XR industry and Head of Programming at AWE (Augmented World Expo). She was the first seated player in the Oculus-sponsored VR League and the first female player to advance to regionals in North America. In 2019, Sonya founded VR Community Builders and she actively encourages positive, inclusive communities through engagement and training with "best practic...

VREL was established by several talented competitive players from both PC and VR gaming worlds. The VREL team wants to become the Premier E-Sports League by running the league the right way. Through professional administration of the VREL, the players’ community can rest assured that they will receive support, answers to their questions, frequent and timely updates to any rules promoting fair play...

Nanea Reeves is the Co-Founder and CEO of TRIPP, a category-leading global XR Wellness company pioneering innovative and accessible technologies that empower people to take control of their mental and emotional well-being. Nanea brings over 15 years of experience in digital distribution, video game technologies and mobile application development. Prior to co-founding TRIPP, Nanea was President and...

Opening minds to all the worlds and opportunities that are being enabled by XR is what drives the passion of Wouter van den Bijgaart for this upcoming tech wave. Wouter was the first who brought the concept of VR entertainment centres to The Netherlands. Now he’s a VR teacher, business developer and the head of “VRNetherlands.nl” - a full-service VR consulting agency. From Location Based VR and VR...

Brennan Spiegel, MD, MSHS, is director of Health Services Research for Cedars-Sinai and Director of the Cedars-Sinai Master's Degree Program in Health Delivery Science. He directs the Cedars-Sinai Center for Outcomes Research and Education (CS-CORE), a multidisciplinary team that investigates how digital health technologies; including wearable biosensors, smartphone applications, virtual reality (...

Ori Inbar is founder of Super Ventures, the first early-stage fund dedicated to Augmented Reality (AR). Ori is also the co-founder and CEO of AWE XR, a global community dedicated to advancing augmented reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR). Since 2010, over 5000 companies and 50,000 professionals have trusted AWE to connect, learn and grow their business in the XR ecosystem - via conferences, meet...

Andy from The Meta VR Community, once known as the Oculus VR Community, once known as The Oculus Rift VR Group 😉 Andy was first introduced to VR around 1998 with a travesty of a headset that makes Google Cardboard look state of the art, and makes motor cycle helmets feel light. As gut wrenching as this monstrosity was, it still planted a seed that would for him, grow to fruition upon the release...

Yennie Solheim leads the social impact work at Niantic, finding ways to create real world impact through the technology Niantic creates. Notable projects include an annual Earth Day campaign, hundreds of hyper local community events around the world, and partnerships with organizations such as UNICEF and the National Park Foundation. In addition, she works on Niantic’s corporate development. She h...

Juliano Calil (Ph. D.) is the co-founder of Virtual Planet Technologies and a pioneer in science communication. His work and academic research are motivated by the urgent need to reduce climate change impacts by adopting equitable solutions through inclusive community engagement. Juliano and his team are developing interactive virtual reality (VR) experiences to communicate climate change impacts...

International bestseller Michael Chatfield is an army veteran who enjoys long walks in foreign countries and some good beer with videos games at night! He writes character driven fast paced series spanning Fantasy, Science fiction and LitRPG. He focuses on bringing a realism and depth to stories that bring his worlds alive. He is currently working on; the fantasy Epic Ten Realms, following two vet...

Like many LitRPG authors, TJ turned to the genre as a way to feed his gaming addiction while pretending to be an adult. His latest projects are: First Fist: Seventh Bridge to the Heavens. Available on ebook. Audio released end of March 2022. The Guild Core: Dragon Bourne (Complete Trilogy). Available on ebook and audio. Eternal Online: The Shattered Sword (Complete Trilogy). Available on ebook and...

Sam has spent his career leading teams and companies at the cutting-edge of the video game industry. Today his team at Level Ex harnesses video game technology and cognitive neuroscience to engage and train over 750,000 medical professionals. Before Level Ex, he was the CEO of the leading independent game publisher in Hollywood, releasing games based on popular films, including The Hunger Games an...

Steve Grubbs is the founder and CEO of VictoryXR. After founding the company in 2016, Steve lead the VXR team to winning the Global Education Innovation of the Year award in 2021. Before founding VXR, Steve founded two other successful ventures. Steve served in the State of Iowa Legislator from 1991-1997, sitting as Chair of the House Education Committee. He holds a B.B.A. in Finance and J.D. from...

Shazi Visram is an entrepreneur and mother committed to bettering the world through business that is socially, financially, and environmentally enlightened. She is the Founder of Happy Family Brands, which she led to become the #1 organic baby food company in the US market with disruptive innovations that have democratized organic food for new families, despite her very humble beginnings. Shazi is...

Martin Brown is an experienced educator with a demonstrated history of working in the entertainment industry. Producer of Moulin Rouge, Co-producer of Romeo+Juliet and Art Director of Strictly Ballroom. He is a strong professional with a Masters of Humanities focused in Literature from University of Tasmania.

Author of the best-selling Divine Dungeon, Completionist Chronicles, and Full Murderhobo series, Dakota Krout was chosen as Audible's top 5 fantasy pick of 2017, has been a top 5 bestseller on Amazon, and a top 6 bestseller on Audible.

Kit Krugman built and leads the Organization & Culture Design practice at co:collective, a creative & strategic transformation consultancy. She has led transformation initiatives from big companies to big causes: she has worked with fast growing start ups, leading technology giants like IBM, LinkedIn, and Microsoft and social justice and gender equity non-profits like the Lower East Side Girls Clu...

Jay leads a nonprofit advocacy campaign, EQuip Our Kids!, whose focus is raising the emotional intelligence of humanity, starting with children and youth. EQuip promotes getting what educators call Social-Emotional Learning curriculum into every pre-K to 12 school. Motivated by the reality that 90% of the public is unaware of the remarkable child, school, family, workplace and society outcomes of...

As an environmental consultant, biologist, and marine scientist, Garrett Stuart uses his diverse background and love of story-telling to drive a change in our future generations. His passions lie in bridging the gap between Nature and our youth to teach families sustainability and safe farming and gardening techniques.

Dane Maxwell is the yoda of SAAS. Author of #1 Best Selling book Start From Zero. Podcast host Start From Zero. He is the founder of Arena Rivals the first of its kind Virtual Reality eSports arena shooter thats focus is to create an uplifting community of highly competitive gamers that want to make friends and build a positive brain.

Psychologist Skip Rizzo conducts research on the design, development and evaluation of virtual reality (VR) systems targeting the areas of clinical assessment, treatment rehabilitation and resilience. This work spans the domains of psychological, cognitive and motor functioning in both healthy and clinical populations. Rizzo, whose work using virtual reality-based exposure therapy to treat PTSD re...

Approaching 30 years of obsession in the wellness and performance space! Fueled by a love of playing sports, Dr. Dave was the kid who dove deep into the science behind performance. This translated into a career focused on coaching mindset, habits and routines, fitness, nutrition, epigenetics, functional medicine, and physiology. From pro athletes to high performing CEO’s, Dr. Dave has been there t...