Tony Parisi, Head of AR/VR Advertising Innovation, Unity: Tony Parisi is the Head of AR/VR Advertising Innovation at Unity Technologies, where he oversees the company's strategy for virtual and augmented reality brand advertising and monetization. As a virtual reality pioneer, serial entrepreneur, and angel investor, Parisi co-created 3D graphics standards, including VRML, X3D and glTF, the new file format standard for 3D web and mobile applications. Parisi is the author of O'Reilly Media's books on Virtual Reality and WebGL: Learning Virtual Reality (2015), Programming 3D Applications in HTML5 and WebGL (2014), and WebGL Up and Running (2012). Parisi has become one of the leading spokespeople for the immersive industry, speaking on industry trends and technology innovations in virtual and augmented reality at numerous industry conferences. He was recently named #16 in Next Reality's 30 People to Watch in Augmented Reality in 2019.

Raffaella Camera is the Head of Brands & Advertisers Solutions for Epic Game’s Unreal Engine. In her role she is responsible for the creation of new solutions and opportunities for brands and advertisers to expand their presence and their connection with consumers in the metaverse. Previously, Ms. Camera was a Managing Director for the Accenture XR practice where she served as Global Head of Innovation & Strategy. At Accenture, she started and grew the worldwide practice; defined the companywide XR positioning and growth strategy; identified and executed growth plans for ecosystem alliances and content creation; created XR-based offerings; and built the Accenture XR brand, disseminating thought leadership worldwide. Prior to that she held leadership positions at major digital advertising agencies, emerging technology and eCommerce companies. Ms. Camera regularly serves as a subject matter expert on Spatial Computing and Innovation, speaking at industry conferences such as CES, Cannes Lions, SXSW, WMC, AWE and Snapdragon Summit. She is sought by the media with articles published in Harvard Business Review, Forbes and Venture Beat among others and was featured as a “market illuminator” in The Infinite Retina, a book on spatial computing with Steve Wozniak’s foreword. Currently she is also an advisor to the Women in XR Fund and a board member of the Advanced Imaging Society. Ms. Camera has won multiple awards in advertising and emerging tech, including VR FEST’s Best VR Branded Entertainment, Communication Arts, Lumiere Award for VR, Webby, IDG’s DEMOgod Award for Best AR Retail Shopping. She combines her creative and analytical skills with an MBA from the University of Southern California (USC) Marshall School of Business and a Masters of Piano Performance from the USC Thornton School of Music. She is a member of the Screen Actors Guild.

Silke Meixner has been recognized as a leading digital business strategist, helping CMOs achieve digital transformation through digital marketing, business and brand strategies that drive end-to-end customer experiences. She helps senior marketing executives navigate their role in orchestrating change across broad ecosystems of internal and external partners to maximize short- and long-term marketing ROI. Silke has deep industry knowledge in technology, media, industrial goods, consumer goods and services where she has operationalized their digital transformation agenda to foster data-driven cultures, with empowered teams that better address market shifts and capture new revenue opportunities. Silke started her career developing new revenue growth platforms for leading companies such as Universal Studios, eToys, and Deloitte before joining IBM’s Digital Strategy practice. Silke enjoys helping marketers succeed in harnessing the power of AI, cognitive abilities and digital tools and enablers to accelerate agile marketing management, marketing operations and commercial capabilities in new product development, e-commerce and brand strategy at leading multinational organizations.

Nigel Tierney serves as Head of Content for Yahoo Ryot Lab, a subsidiary of Verizon Media, overseeing the development, creative, art production, & marketing departments. Nigel is shepherding the advancement of immersive 5G content specifically targeting the integration of storytelling, brand, & celebrity, as well as creating original content across Yahoo & Verizon Media’s suite of brands as well as Verizon’s partners Disney, Snap, NFL & Time. Notably, Nigel directed & produced the critically acclaimed and award winning EARTH with Lil Dicky, Leonardo Dicaprio, Ariana Grande & 30 other celebrity artists which launched the global campaign WeLoveTheEarth.org. In addition to spearheading content; Nigel has led a team to build out Yahoo Ryot Lab’s state-of-the-art and first-of-its-kind 5G Innovation Studio. As the first 5G production studio in the country, this new broadcast facility in Los Angeles is fitted with the latest in motion and volumetric capture technology, all of which has been designed to experiment with forms of storytelling that leverage Verizon’s 5G technology. Prior to his time at Yahoo Ryot Lab, Nigel served as Chief Creative for a variety of animated projects responsible for over tens-of-millions in views as well as Senior Technical Director at DreamWorks Animation with award winning credits including a variety of tentpole franchises such as SHREK FOREVER AFTER, THE CROODS, KUNG FU PANDA 3, & CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS. Nigel is also known for creating the world famous J/K COMEDY CLUB, a hidden club located in the heart of the DreamWorks Campus, that showcases a wide variety of celebrity comedians.

Leslie Shannon, Head of Ecosystem and Trend Scouting, Nokia: Leslie entered the mobile communications world as a billing database analyst in the early 1990s. She joined Nokia Australia in 2000 and became the manager of the FutureLab, an early developer incubator in the days of WAP, GPRS and 3G. Building on her first-hand technical and business experience of the reality of bringing applications to market, she developed an analysis service for Nokia that examined success and failure factors for operators bringing mobile data to market for 4G that proved so successful that Nokia created a new department around her work. While in this role, she was based in Finland and worked with over 100 operators in more than 70 countries. Leslie relocated to Silicon Valley in 2015 and now focuses on identifying disruptions and opportunities for Nokia and its operator partners coming from outside the traditional telco world, particularly in the worlds of 5G, AR, VR, MR and the Spatial Internet. She is passionate not only about bringing strategic insight to Nokia and its customers, but also about introducing successful new paradigms from Silicon Valley to the telecommunications mindset, and continues to be a highly-regarded analyst and speaker. Born in Manhattan, Leslie has a BA in Psychology from the University of Virginia and a Master’s Degree in the History of Art from Yale University. She was an undefeated five-time champion in the American television game show “Jeopardy!” in 1992 and was invited to return to the show to compete in a tournament for one million dollars as one of the show’s “most memorable contestants” in 2002 and again in 2014. (She didn’t win, but still had a lot of fun.) She also got four questions away from willing a million dollars on “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” in August 2017. Leslie lives in Santa Clara, California, with her husband and their two mobile-data enthusiast children.

Bill Newell, CEO, SparX Works Inc.: As a founding partner of SparX Works Inc., Bill Newell brings more than 18 years of corporate and entrepreneurial experience to the company. Bill has been involved in production and multimedia from its early days and has had key roles in establishing many of the business processes that today are often taken for granted. Bill's areas of expertise include finance, technology, production, and operations. Bill's ability to increase productivity without sacrificing quality has been proven time and time again and is a key asset to the company. A longtime associate of his partner, Sarina Simon, Bill came to North South Studios from the Knowledge Kids Network where he served as Chief Operating Officer for five years. Bill co-founded the Knowledge Kids Network and was instrumental in defining its business objectives, operational processes, and company structure. His thorough planning and oversight launched the KidsEdge websites. This network of award-winning websites contained more than 250 games, thousands of articles, and had the capacity to support 3.5 million users. During his tenure at the Knowledge Kids Network, Bill also executive produced a 12 minute animated movie entitled, DotzWorld, which premiered on the AOL network and featured 25 original characters. Bill's insightful finance skills were invaluable to the company in its negotiations with AOL and other prominent partners. Prior to joining the Knowledge Kids Network, Bill was Vice President of Production for IXL Los Angeles, a NASDAQ listed Internet services company with more than $12 million in yearly revenue in the Los Angeles office alone. As VP of Production, Bill oversaw all aspects of production and provided sales support for IXL's west coast offices. Always prolific, he supervised and managed the design and implementation of over 100 projects including assignments for Polygram, Fox, Warner Brothers, NewsCorp, Baker and Taylor, Mazda, Kawasaki, Universal Studios, and Technicolor, among others. Making use of his extensive finance background, Bill brought financial discipline to his production team and productivity increased over 200% during his tenure at IXL. Before joining IXL, Bill was Vice President of Production for Digital Planet, an Internet services company that was later acquired by IXL. As VP of Production, Bill provided direct management of technical, production, and creative teams. He also oversaw all proposal submissions, bids, technical analyses, and creative treatments for media, technology, and consumer companies including Intel, Mattel, the US Postal Service, Disney Online and Allstate. Bill is also a veteran of the multimedia pioneering company, Philips Media, where he worked for four years as an Executive Producer, managing two in-house production groups. In this executive role, Bill directed a 35 member staff and produced six educational CD ROM products. He also directed the localization of numerous products for the Japanese, English, Swedish and American markets.