IGNITE & Guest Speakers
Our IGNITE Colloquium features guest artists and industry professionals, as well as screenings, workshops, and seminars around creative and professional development for students. Featuring speakers ranging from award-winning film and television producers and directors to leaders in immersive and interactive storytelling, students gain valuable knowledge on a variety of topics in the emerging media arts.
IGNITE is held most Fridays during the academic year, and most are open to the public. Check out the IGNITE calendar below for Information on upcoming events.
2025-26 Speakers
Kate Beecroft
Beecroft is a Los Angeles native who graduated from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London. Her background in acting has given her a deep love and respect for those she works with on camera, whether professional or non-actors. Her feature film debut “East of Wall” premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, winning the Audience Award, where it was acquired by Sony Pictures Classics. Kate has been placed on IndieWire’s list of “Sundance 2025 breakouts” as well as a “ReFrame Rise Finalist, 2025 Cohort” for WIF.
Beecroft was the 2025 recipient of the Adrienne Shelley Excellence in Filmmaking Award.
Greg Combs
Combs is a veteran themed entertainment executive with 31 years at Walt Disney Imagineering, where he served as Vice President and Executive Creative Producer for the Tokyo Portfolio, providing strategic leadership for Tokyo Disneyland, Tokyo DisneySea, and resort hotels. He has held senior leadership positions spanning creative design, production, and show systems, and lived in Tokyo managing WDI’s Japan office while partnering with Oriental Land Company on multi-year master planning. His extensive project portfolio includes iconic attractions such as Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Forbidden Eye, Tower of Terror, and Journey to the Center of the Earth.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-combs-producer/
Lisa Osborne
Producer Lisa Osborne (@julipeno) specializes in immersive and experimental storytelling and art. As the head of Black Public Media’s emerging media programs (or BPMplus), Osborne has built an international roster of filmmakers, artists, and technologists who create innovative work using film and immersive technologies. Examining the historical record is a frequent throughline in her work, reflecting an early-career focus on journalism after graduating from Northwestern University. Osborne has worked for adidas, American Film Institute, Turner Network Television, and Sundance Film Festival. She was an adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon University and an immersive juror for Tribeca Film Festival.
Matt Leonard
Leonard has worked at ILM since 2017 as a Senior VFX Trainer and currently focuses on the GenAI, Environment and Creature Development. He’s been involved in the VFX industry since 1993 and has worked on various feature films, tv shows and commercials over that time. Some of Matt’s credits include Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Godzilla, Star Wars Episode 9, and Avatar: Fire and Ash. Matt is an accredited trainer for Nuke, Katana, and RenderMan. He has been a member of the Visual Effects Society since 2011 and a co-author of VES Handbook of Visual Effects (3rd Edition).
Ivy MacDonald
MacDonald (Blackfeet) is a director, producer, screenplay writer, and cinematographer based in Montana. She is a co-writer and co-director of the “Bring Them Home/Aiskótáhkapiyaaya” documentary film (2024). She won an Emmy for her producing work on “Blackfeet Boxing: Not Invisible” for ESPN and her first docuseries “Murder in Big Horn,” which she produced, premiered at 2023 Sundance Film Festival and broadcast nationally on Showtime. She was a part of the Fourth World Media Fellow for Tracey Rector’s indigenous filmmaker program and is currently a part of the Firelight Media Documentary Lab.
Amy Moorcroft
Moorcroft is Emerging Talent Manager at Industrial Light & Magic’s Vancouver studios. Moorcroft oversees school outreach programs, manages Jedi Academy initiatives (including Interns and Trainees), and facilitates junior mentorships. Before this role, Moorcroft dedicated six years to talent acquisition for ILM, preceded by extensive recruitment experience across various VFX & Animation companies, where she hired for a wide range of positions.
Bona Bones
Bona Bones is an accomplished animator, holding a B.F.A. in Experimental Animation from the California Institute of the Arts and an M.F.A. in Animation from the University of Edinburgh–Edinburgh College of Art. Their professional credits include television shows and feature films with brands like Cartoon Network, HBO, Hulu, and Amazon.
In 2016, they were awarded the prestigious Helen Hill Fellowship at Dartmouth College, which sparked their passion for arts education. They have taught full-time in higher education for over seven years and now serve as a full-time Assistant Professor of Animation at the University of Kansas.
Their research and creative practice focus on the intersections of animation and politics, exploring how the medium has been wielded historically as both propaganda and protest art. In their free time, they provide free mentorship opportunities for students.
Dan ‘Novysan’ Novy
Professor Novysan is an Assistant Professor of Emerging Media Arts in the Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he teaches courses in the Emerging Media Arts major including Story Lab I and II and Digital Fabrication and Physical Computing.
Novysan is a Research Affiliate at the MIT Media Lab, where he co-originated the “Science Fiction-Inspired Prototyping” and “Indistinguishable from Magic” classes. His work focuses on decreasing the alienation fostered by traditional passive media consumption; increasing social interaction through transparent, interconnected and fluid media; and creating enriched, active, and inspired immediate experiences. He is a former visiting scientist at Magic Leap, and an Emmy- and Visual Effects Society Award-winning VFX technical supervisor, transmedia experience designer, and artist who formerly chaired the Visual Effects Society’s Technology Committee.
Tracy E. Gilchrist
Tracy E. Gilchrist is the former VP, Editorial and Special Projects for equalpride, the parent company of The Advocate and Out. A media veteran, she writes about the intersections of LGBTQ+ equality and pop culture. She was the editor-in-chief of The Advocate from 2020 to 2022 and the first feminism editor for the 57-year-old brand. Her cover stories for Out and The Advocate include interviews with Brandi Carlile, Cynthia Nixon, Janelle Mone, Kristen Stewart, and Harvey Guillen. In 2024, she went viral for her “holding space” interview with Wicked’s Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande.
In 2017, she launched the company’s first podcast, The Advocates. She is an experienced broadcast interviewer, panel moderator, and public speaker who has delivered her talk, “Pandora’s Box to Pose: Game-changing Visibility in Film and TV,” at universities throughout the country. She was the weekly culture expert on Sirius XM’s The Frank DeCaro Show from 2015-2016.
Trent Claus
Claus is an award-winning Visual Effects Supervisor with Lola VFX. He has worked on over 130 feature films, including 20 Academy Award nominees for Best Visual Effects (4 winners), 13 nominees for Best Picture (1 winner), and with a cumulative worldwide box-office of over 47 billion dollars.
Claus is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and the Visual Effects Society (VES). In 2012, he was awarded the VES Award for Outstanding Compositing in a Feature Motion Picture for his groundbreaking work on “Captain America: The First Avenger”. In 2020 he was nominated for Outstanding Compositing once again for “Captain Marvel”.
Claus was heavily involved with the first era of Marvel Studios films, having contributed to 19 of the 22 films leading up to Avengers: Endgame. Notably he was a VFX Supervisor on “Avengers: Endgame”, “Captain Marvel”, “Captain America: Civil War”, “Avengers: Infinity War”, and others.
More recently, he has been working with Lucasfilm on shows such as “Ahsoka”, “The Mandalorian”, “Obi-Wan Kenobi”,and “The Book of Boba Fett”, as well as continuing to work with Marvel on such projects as “Black Widow”, “WandaVision”, and “Deadpool / Wolverine”. Other notable films on which he has worked include: “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, “The Social Network”, “Prometheus”, “Star Trek”, “Avatar”, and “Blade Runner”.
Amanda Dittami
Dittami started her career as a game designer / developer in 2012. At the time, games as art was an emerging and somewhat controversial topic and women in the game industry were extremely few and far between. From the start Amanda has loved to push the boundaries of what technology does and what it can be. She loves to be on the cutting edge and keep herself on her digital toes.
Dittami has worked on a wide range of projects including mixed reality, haptic design, digital installations and more. She was the Game & Digital Designer for the hit animated PBS kids show Hero Elementary, broadcast across the nation. Her work has also toured museums across the nation, including The Field Museum, The Leonardo, The Phoenix Art Museum and more. Most recently Amanda is working as the lead of design operations at Beast Code.
Dittami identifies as FilipinX++, is a strong advocate for underrepresented groups in technology and has regularly served as a mentor for many inclusive programs including the 3G Summit: The Future of Girls, Gaming and Gender, The Fair Shot Project and YOUmedia Learning Labs Network.
Jesse Damiani
Damiani is a writer, curator, and foresight strategist. He is Communications Strategist for Metaculus, a platform fostering forecasts for the public good, and Founder of Postreality Labs, a sensemaking consultancy that helps organizations navigate the polycrisis through resilience, adaptation, creativity, and futures literacies. He writes the best-selling Reality Studies newsletter and hosts the Urgent Futures podcast.
Damiani has taught in NYU’s Integrated Design & Media Program, USC’s Media Arts + Practice program, SCI-Arc’s Design Theory & Pedagogy program, and currently teaches “Creativity in Crisis” in UNL’s Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts. Damiani is also Senior Curator and Director of Simulation Literacies at Nxt Museum and an Affiliate of the metaLAB at Harvard and Institute for the Future. His writing appears in Architectural Design, Flash Art, NBC News, WIRED, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. Curated exhibitions include SMALL V01CE at Honor Fraser Gallery, Lilypads: Mediating Exponential Systems at Nxt Museum, and PROOF OF ART at Francisco Carolinum Linz. For many years he edited the Best American Experimental Writing anthology (Wesleyan University Press). He has served as Arts and Culture Advisor for Protocol Labs, XR Curator at the Games for Change Festival, and Host of Adobe’s Taking Shape, a hub for 3D art and design. He was also formerly Director of Emerging Technology and Insight at Southern New Hampshire University, where he led the Future of Work initiative.
Booker T. Mattison
Mattison is a filmmaker, author, and associate professor of Entertainment and Media Studies at the University of Georgia. He wrote and directed the BET+ original film The Sound of Christmas starring Grammy-winning recording artist Ne-Yo.
Mattison’s NYU thesis film, ‘The Gilded Six Bits,’ adapted from Zora Neale Hurston’s short story, marked the first film or television adaptation of the acclaimed author’s work. The film had its broadcast premiere on Showtime and stars Chad L. Coleman, T’keyah Crystal Keymah, and Wendell Pierce. The Hollywood Reporter said, “Mattison’s direction and feel for her characters match up to Hurston’s sterling piece of fiction…full of atmosphere and strongly developed characters.”
Mattison’s upcoming legal thriller An Unusual Suspect, a Tubi original film, is set to premiere on the streamer on March 28, 2025.
As a novelist, Mattison debuted with Unsigned Hype (2009), published by Revell Books and nominated for a South Carolina Book Award in the Young Adult Category. His second novel, Snitch (2011), received a starred review in Publishers Weekly.
Mattison holds an MFA in film and television production from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University where he studied under Spike Lee, and a BS in mass communication from Norfolk State University. At the University of Georgia he teaches directing, screenwriting, and production capstone. Mattison has held academic appointments at Hampton University, Regent University, the College of New Rochelle, and Brooklyn College of the City University of New York.
Erica Larsen-Dockray
Larsen-Dockray is an animation and media artist, educator, entrepreneur, playworker, and activist. She is owner/operator of her studio, ‘eek art’, devoted to her art practice which includes hybrid installations consisting of varying elements of painting, moving image, dance, theater, interactivity, and experimental projection. Her work has been shown domestically and internationally in cultural institutions such as the Los Angeles Municipal Gallery, The Great Plains Art Museum, Future Studio Gallery, The New Children’s Museum and at the Art Festival Kesenian, Indonesia.
Erica is currently a lecturer at the Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts at UNL and continues to serve on the advisory board dating back to 2017. She has over 25 year’s experience as animation and media arts educator in a wide array of locations and ages including 9 years on Skid Row. As a special faculty at her alma mater, CalArts, her class “The Animated Woman” was featured in over 1,000 national and international news outlets including the LA and New York Times.
She is the founding director of the Calibraska Arts Initiative launched in 2013. Every summer since, she has returned to her home state of Nebraska, often bringing a variety of professional artists with her to teach unique art and media offerings. It currently tours six different cities and includes an internship program, educator training, free virtual workshops with her partners at Nickelodeon Animation Studio and more. She is a trained playworker and co-founded SCV Adventure Play Foundation focused on self-directed play space and education.
Joshua Rubin
Rubin is an Interactive-Emmy winning narrative director, writer, consultant and veteran of the entertainment industry, with 20 years of experience in Film, TV, Video Games and XR.
He is an experienced collaborator known for breaking complex stories with ideas that take risks, working with senior creative partners and mentoring writing teams. He brings high-level world-building and detailed creative problem solving, experience interfacing with studio-level IP-holders and pitching story-worlds to motivate teams of hundreds. He is a thought leader on XR and AI, as well as Immersive Theater and Experience Design.
Rubin first made his mark co-writing ASSASSIN’S CREED 2, which was nominated for Best Video Game Writing by the WGA, AIAS and BAFTA, and is widely considered the best of the ASSASSIN series. Soon after, he was part of the core creative team at Bungie responsible for building the world of DESTINY.
Recent major studio work includes: Narrative Director at Techland; Lead Writer on OUTRIDERS from People Can Fly; and Narrative Director of GROUNDHOG DAY: LIKE FATHER LIKE SON, Sony’s 2019 VR sequel to the beloved Bill Murray movie.
In the field of branching narrative, Joshua won an INTERACTIVE EMMY for his design work (with Brad Kane) on NETFLIX’s YOU VS. WILD: OUT COLD. He was a Lead Writer at Telltale Games, where he wrote on: GAME OF THRONES, THE WALKING DEAD and MINECRAFT.
Rubin is also an XR pioneer, co-creating the sci-fi VR short THE ARGOS FILE, which premiered at the 2017 Venice Film Festival and won Best Live Action Experience at the VRLA Proto Awards. His 2023 AR thriller ASSET 15, made with Doug Liman’s 30 Ninjas, was an App Store Pick of the Day. He’s Consulted for XR Studios like Dreamscape, WeVR, Nomadic and Arcturus.
As Subverse Narrative Consulting, Rubin acts as a creative catalyst for studios around the world, guiding and shaping stories and design, hiring and managing diverse teams of writers. Recently, he’s built a writing team for Square Enix Tokyo, shepherded a major new free-to-play shooter from Yager in Berlin and created the story-world for The Department of Wonder, a narrative-based high-tech retail space, in Dallas, Texas… among MANY others.
Rubin’s roots are in film and TV, where his very first screenplay, ANNANINA, a love story set in Paris and New York, was a winner of the prestigious Nicholl Fellowship in 2000 — the annual contest for best unproduced screenplays held by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
For more visit: www.subverse-interactive.com
Past Colloquium Speakers:
2024-25
- Gale Anne Hurd Hurd is the founder of Valhalla Entertainment, most recently known for the global cultural phenomenon, Emmy-winning and record-shattering TV series, “The Walking Dead,” and its multiple spin-offs. Hurd’s extensive producing credits include a range of Academy Award-winning films, with “Aliens” notably earning seven nominations and two wins. Her additional Academy Award-winning works include “The Abyss,” “The Ghost and the Darkness,” “Armageddon,” and “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” which was recently added to the National Film Registry by the U.S. Library of Congress. Hurd produced and co-wrote “The Terminator.” Some of her additional studio credits include “Tremors,” “The Relic,” “Aeon Flux,” Ang Lee’s “Hulk,” “The Incredible Hulk,” “Alien Nation,” and Sundance Audience Award winner “The Waterdance,” among many others.
- Richard Dorton Dorton aka Mocapman, is a veteran performance capture actor, director, stunt coordinator, producer, movement consultant, instructor and casting director with over 150 video game credits to his name. With 25 years of experience in motion & performance capture under his belt, Dorton has been in the middle of the ever-changing technology and processes used in today’s world of motion capture.
- Josie Azzam Azzam grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska and attended the Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln before earning her MFA in Film Editing from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. Her feature film career includes work as an assistant editor on Marvel’s Black Panther, Goosebumps, and How To Be Single. As an editor, Azzam’s other credits include Summer ‘03 (SXSW 2018), Don’t Look Deeper (Quibi, Catherine Hardwicke), and Rap Sh!t (HBO Max, Issa Rae). A recipient of the 2020 Sundance Sally Menke Memorial Fellowship, she also served as co-chair of the Motion Picture Editor’s Guild Women’s Steering Committee and is an alumna of the American Cinema Editors Diversity Program. In 2025, she brought her industry expertise home to Nebraska, where she now produces content for Nebraska Public Media.
- Julie Ann Crommett Crommett is a powerhouse in media and storytelling, driving transformative change at the intersection of entertainment, business, and culture. As the Founder and CEO of Collective Moxie, a global storytelling, media strategy and audience engagement agency, she advises top studios, brands, and creatives on innovative strategies that reshape industries. Previously, she led multicultural audience engagement at Disney, influencing billion-dollar hits like Encanto, Black Panther, and Raya and the Last Dragon, and spearheaded global DEI initiatives at Google and NBCUniversal.
- Nolan Tredway Found covered in moss near the Korvik River, Nolan was raised in the Great North by a mountain and a burning forest. He learned the art of storytelling from his time among the Volkos, before studying art at the University of Nebraska and Fundacion Ortega y Gasset in Toledo, Spain. He is currently the co-director of Tugboat Gallery and founder of the performance art collective, kindred.
- Jessica Julius Jessica Julius is Vice President, Creative Development/Experiences at Sphere Studios, an immersive content studio focused on creating multi-sensory entertainment exclusively for Sphere, a cutting-edge entertainment platform first launched in Las Vegas in September 2023. In her role, Jessica leads the development and oversight of new, innovative content and experiences designed to maximize the capabilities of Sphere’s transformative medium. With over 20 years of experience in film development and production, Jessica previously held the position of Producer and Vice President, Creative Development, at Walt Disney Animation Studios.
- Nancy Nguyen Nguyen is an emerging documentary editor based in Los Angeles, California. She was an editor on New Wave (Tribeca) and In Living Memory, part of the Daytime Emmy-nominated series Asian American Stories of Resilience and Beyond (PBS/WORLD Channel). Nguyen recently assisted on Heightened Scrutiny (Sundance), about the Supreme Court fight for gender-affirming care for transgender youth. Currently, Nguyen is working on a docuseries about Southeast Asian communities across the U.S. ahead of the 50th year anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War.
- Joe Calrco Called a “theatre man of imagination and vision” by the New York Times, Joe Calarco is an award-winning director and playwright whose work has been seen around the country and the world. Calarco’s adaptation of the play, Shakespeare’s R&J derived from Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet ran at the Nebraska Repertory Theatre in the Spring 2025 semester.
- Daniel Byers As a filmmaker focused on wildlife, climate, and indigenous rights, Byers has worked in over 60 countries—from tracking cartels along the rivers of Honduras to chasing snow leopards through the mountains of Afghanistan. His award-winning films and photographs have been featured in hundreds of film festivals and publications around the world, including the Smithsonian, UK Guardian, BBC, and National Geographic. Byers also writes and directs fiction. His first feature film, Eradication, was released in 2022, with his second in the works for next year. He completed his MFA at Columbia School of the Arts in 2022.
- Brad MacDonald MacDonald is an interaction designer, artist, musician and storyteller using technology and expertise in user experience to craft narratives for museums, cultural institutions and corporate partners. He is particularly interested in the creative process, universal principles of design, and the emotions that drive experiences regardless of platform. He served as the Director of Creative Media at the Smithsonian Arts + Industries Building, Project Director for Digital Experiences at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, and was invited to participate in the master planning charrette for the Museum of Us in San Diego, and has taught workshops on iterative design at Balboa Park, ECSITE, and throughout Europe and China.
- Jillian Mayer Through, videos, sculptures, online experiences, photography, performances, and installations, Mayer explores how technology affects our lives, bodies, and identities by processing how our physical world and bodies are impacted and reshaped by our participation in a digital landscape. Mayer investigates the points of tension between our online and physical worlds and makes work that attempts to inhabit the increasingly porous boundary between the two. Mayer’s artwork has a consistent thread of modeling how to subvert capital-driven modes of technological innovation. Mayer’s films have screened at festivals including Sundance, SXSW, Rottenberg Film Fest, and the New York Film Festival. She is a fellow of the Sundance Institute’s New Frontiers Lab and New Narratives on Climate Change Lab.
- Eric Shamlin Shamlin is a three-time Emmy-, two-time Peabody-, and sixteen-time Cannes Lion-winning creative executive with over 26 years of experience. While working at the intersection of traditional storytelling and emerging technology he’s built teams and delivered high-profile collaborations across the entire media ecosystem. He currently sits on the Board of Governors of the Television Academy, the Board of Delegates for the Producers Guild of America and holds multiple Advisory roles for the SXSW Festival.
- Juan Obando Obando has worked between Colombia and the United States and currently resides in Phoenix, AZ, USA, where he is an Associate Professor at the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University. He holds a BA in Design and Architecture from Universidad de Los Andes (Bogotá, Colombia) and an MFA in Electronic and Time-Based Media Art from Purdue University (West Lafayette, IN). Obando’s works have been exhibited in México, France, Colombia, Germany, and the US.
2023-24
- Katie Wiliams, Digital paint supervisor at ILM Vancouver. Her work has appeared in The Marvels, Fast X, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Black Panther: Wakanda Foreverand many more blockbuster films.
- Signe Baumane, Brooklyn-based independent filmmaker, artist, writer and animator. She has made 17 award-winning animated shorts, including My Love Affair With Marriage, which premiered in June 2022 at Tribeca Festival and has screened at over 90 festivals winning twenty awards. It was nominated by the European Film Academy as Best Animated Feature.
- Michael Svoboda, Filmmaker, writer, educator and mentor who’s coached dozens of Hollywood artists in the practice of storytelling.
- Francesca Carletto-Leon, Award-winning video game developer and educator specializing in emotion-first design and collaborative multiplayer experiences. Their work combines programming, electronics, and traditional art formats to create playful experiences. Carletto-Leon has worked in the games industry as a designer, producer, and writer with Filament Games, Fullbright Games, Contigo Games, and more.
- Mikhael Tara Garver, Has worked across brands, arts organizations, social justice organizations, and civic organizations as a pioneer in the experiential field.
- Peter Flaherty, Director and interactive artist whose work has shown in over a hundred international venues, including theaters, galleries, and museums. He conceived and directed The Dial, an interactive narrative combining augmented reality & projection mapping, which premiered at Sundance in 2019. He created and directedThe Surrogate, a groundbreaking Virtual Reality narrative that melds 360 video with a computer-generated explorable environment, which was a SXSW Interactive Innovation Award Finalist in 2016. He was Creative Director for Marvel Studios and Disney’s Eternals AR, released in November 2021.
- Michaela Wadzinski, UNL alum is an animator, filmmaker, storyboard artist and writer. Michaela has worked on storyboards for several animated television series and created award-winning animated and live-action shorts.
- Franklin Sioux Bob, Actor and writer, known for 2022’s Cannes-selection War Pony.
- Willi White, Producer and director, known for 2022’s Cannes-selection War Pony.
- Andrew Schneider, OBIE award-winning, Drama Desk-nominated performer, writer, and interactive-electronics artist creating original works for theater, dance, sound, video, and installation since 2003.
- Anna Marie Piersimoni, Digital media specialist and educator who’s worked with the AFI Enchanced TV Workshop.
- Rick Goldsmith, Two-time Academy Award-nominated director and the principal filmmaker and president of Kovno Communications. Goldsmith’s work is primarily concerned with film and video projects that address cultural and social themes in American life, democratic ideals, and the concerns of youth.
- Mike Smith, Motivational speaker, skateboarder and founder of The Bay and co-founder/co-executive director of Rabble Mill.
- Gigi Johnson, Transformational, immersive experience builder and creator in XR and music imagining and envisioning the future of creative work.
2022-23
- Danny Elfman, Four-time Oscar Nominee Film Composer, Collaborator with the Lied Center for Performing Arts
- Paul Vanouse, Interdisciplinary Artist, Collaborator with Fiendish Plots
- Dan Mirvish, Director, screenwriter, producer, author
- Jen Landis, Artist and Entrepreneur
- Duncan Ransom, Founder and CEO of The Endless Collection, Technical Director, story artist, animator
- Erik Weaver, Head of Virtual and Adaptive Production-Entertainment Technology Center at the University of Southern California
- The Bragg Brothers, Writers, Directors, Collaborator with the Ross Media Arts Center
- Wesaam Al-Badry, Investigative Journalist, Interdisciplinary Artist
- Melanie Coombes, Award-winning Producer Of Animation, Documentary and Dramatic Film, Television
- Elizabeth Baquet, UNL Alum, Podcast Executive for Mosaic Media
- Mitch Benes, Executive Director of redthread
- Tory Lenosky, Emmy-nominated Producer, Collaborator with the Ross Media Arts Center