Heroes of Reality

Jay Samit is the former Independent Vice Chairman of Deloitte. An American digital media innovator, he has pioneered advancements in music and video distribution, social media, and ecommerce. He is the author of the bestselling book Disrupt You! Master Personal Transformation, Seize Opportunity, and Thrive in the Era of Endless Innovation and Future Proofing You - Twelve Truths for Creating Opport...

A well-known industry veteran, Ariella has dedicated the past 30 years to creating and selling games that expand the market, along the way achieving numerous “firsts.” While CEO of Legacy Games, Emergency Room, one of the first medical simulations ever created, was very successful. Subsequently, Lehrer established the TV drama genre in video games, with four Law & Order adventure games. A leading...

Victor Karlsson, Artist and Conscious Cartoonist, refused his call for adventure until he attended his 9th funeral. His frequent interaction with death led to an obsession with the question “What is the purpose of Life?”. His burning desire to find a fulfilling answer to this, led him to begin his quest for discovering a life worth living. He soon realized that his purpose was the quest itself. In...

Steve started his channel just 2 years ago and, save a few skits and music performances, was pretty much immediately making VR content. It didn't take long for him to find his niche. He was an early adopter of the Quest, and he immediately got to work cranking out content. He stuck to the talking in front of the mic format for a while, occasionally sprinkling in gaming and reviews, but over time,...

Sean Cahill is an investigative filmmaker and retired U.S. Navy Chief Master-at-Arms. He served on various vessels and duty stations abroad; most notably he was part of the bridge crew onboard the USS Princeton during the infamous Tic-Tac UAP incident with the USS Nimitz in 2004. Sean is featured on episode three of the History Channel's Six Part Documentary: Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Inv...

When he was six, Marcus Howard got Super Mario Bros. 3 on the Nintendo Entertainment System for Christmas, and he’s been playing and building video games ever since. Video games inspired Marcus’ interest in technology, and in the 9th grade, he started coding his own video game on the TI-83+ graphing calculator. Today, Marcus is CEO of the esports education startup MetArena, and the President of Ta...

Adam Scorgie’s plan A has always been to work hard, be humble and take chances; and it has worked tremendously to date. A father of 3, a loving husband and an acclaimed documentarian, Adam has an astonishing ability to balance his relentless work schedule and his invaluable family time. Primarily growing up in BC’s Okanagan Valley, Adam was inspired to move to New York City, where he spent 3 years...

Walter Greenleaf PhD is a neuroscientist and a medical technology developer working at Stanford University. With over three decades of research and development experience, Walter is considered a leading authority in the fields of digital medicine and medical virtual reality technology. Walter is currently a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, the...

Tipatat Chennavasin is a General Partner of the Venture Reality Fund investing in early stage VR, AR, AI and 5G companies. He has experience creating VR/AR content and became convinced of the power of VR when he accidentally cured himself of his real life fear of heights while developing in VR. He is an adviser for many VR and AR companies as well as a mentor for VR and AR incubators and accelerat...

David Perry is a Northern Irish video game developer and programmer. He became prominent for programming platform games for 16-bit home consoles in the early to mid 1990s, including Disney's Aladdin, Cool Spot, and Earthworm Jim. He founded Shiny Entertainment, where he worked from 1993 to 2006. Perry created games for companies such as Disney, 7 Up, McDonald's, Orion Pictures, and Warner Bros. In...

With 20+ years experience of delivering immersive experiences, from 25+ PC and VR games to enterprise training to out-of-home entertainment, Sam has worked with the biggest brands including BBC, E4, Vodafone, Porsche and McDonald’s and many more, and has been featured in The Guardian, BBC, EDGE and Time. These past 8 years have been focussed solely on building a studio around VR, AR and MR (xR) lo...

Dmitri is an Internet entrepreneur, advisor, investor and an all-around sweetheart. I started working in investment banking after college, then spent 8 years at Overture/Yahoo doing global business development, before catching the startup bug in 2011. I'm pretty passionate about using technology for human thriving, which is why I head up the LA chapter of TransformativeTech.org

Forbes contributor Charlie Fink is the Author of "Remote Collaboration & Virtual Conferences, The Future of Work" (2020), "Convergence" (2019) and "Charlie Fink's Metaverse" (2017). In the early 90s, Fink was EVP & COO of VR pioneer Virtual World Entertainment. Previously, he was VP of Disney Feature Animation Story Development (85-92), SVP & CCO of AOL Studios (‘95-’99), and President and CCO of...

Yfke Laanstra is Futurist, Keynote Speaker, Trainer and Author of the Dutch book 'Bits, Bytes & Bewustzijn' ('Computer Code & Consciousness'). She is passionate about the cutting edge of consciousness, computer technology and human potential and focusses on the implications and applications of computer technology on our humanness, wellness and consciousness. She is the Dutch Transformative Technol...

Professor Agnis Stibe is a 4x TED speaker, MIT alum, globally recognized corporate consultant and scientific advisor. Agnis provides a disruptive STIBE method and tools to master any change with certainty. He is also the Professor of Transformation and Academic Director on Artificial Intelligence at EM Normandie Business School. Paris Lead of Silicon Valley founded Transformative Technology commun...

Sam Shames is a Co-Founder & Chief Operating Officer of Embr Labs, the first thermal wellness company and maker of the Wave bracelet. Sam has been with Embr Labs since inception and has held a variety of functional roles from engineering and manufacturing to FP&A and sales operations. For his work at Embr Labs, he has been recognized as a Forbes 30 Under 30. Sam received his bachelor’s degree in M...

As the former Head of Technology for Burning Man for 17 years, Heather was at the heart of a movement which rose from a blank dusty uncharted desert canvas to become a global phenomenon. She helped cultivate and shepherd a culture, community and organization dedicated to participatory experiences, co-created content, civic engagement, and powerfully transformative events. She was an entrusted comm...

Chloe Duckworth is a sophomore at the University of Southern California studying computational neuroscience. She’s also a student entrepreneur, as the cofounder of both Valence Vibrations, a sensory substitution technology translating emotions to vibrations, and Hope Hearted, a nonprofit providing COVID-19 kits to unhoused people in the Bay Area.

A vetran of the VR industry with a specific focus on designer and entrepreneur in the area of healthcare. He is skilled in turning complexity into compelling stories told through technology. Founder of First Hand Technology which is one of the first VR companies to use VR for pain management in hospitals.

Emmy award winning Chris Prynoski is the president and founder of Titmouse, an animation production company with offices in Los Angeles, New York and Vancouver. His animation career began in New York with his work on MTV shows such as Beavis and Butt-head, Daria and his Emmy nominated creation MTV Downtown. Chris and his wife Shannon then moved to LA to launch Titmouse, a home for passionate artis...

A wealth of experience in the animation industry and as an independent filmmaker allows Dr. Patricia Beckmann-Wells, assistant professor in Interactive Media Arts (IMA), the opportunity to give students a unique industry-oriented perspective of the field. Beckmann-Wells teaches animation, game and toy design, virtual reality production and emerging technologies at Irvine Valley College (IVC). ​Dr....

With a background in anthropology, documentary filmmaking and web design, I've been working as a freelance photographer, filmmaker, teacher and consultant for the last 8 years. I've also spent 3 years working as a sales and personal shopping specialist at Apple in NYC. I’m currently based in Lisbon, Portugal but working internationally with a highly talented team of designers, developers, data sci...

Amy Jo Kim started her tech career as a neuroscientist -turned-programmer with a degree in experimental psychology. She found that she had a knack for building and tuning systems, so she became a UX designer and then put her skills to use in multiplayer social gaming – and never looked back. She was part of the early design team for Rock Band, The Sims, Ultima Online, eBay, Netflix, and Happify –...

Jason Weimann is a YouTuber, programmer, and instructor for game development. He teaches people how to build worlds in the unity game engine using C# code. This can be for mobile, PC or even Virtual Reality.

Bio: Amir Borzorgzaday is cofounder and CEO at Virtuleap, a VR startup that unlocks neuroscience with virtual reality to help pharmaceutical companies accelerate the approval of drugs designed to treat cognitive illnesses like Alzheimer’s disease. Previous to Virtuleap, Amir founded Gameguise, a mobile games studio based in Dubai, and Time Dirham, the first social impact startup to introduce time...