Chief Growth Officer, LAVA Celebrity | AI Summit | xGoogle: Emi Wayner is an advisor and partnership executive with over 20 years of experience commercializing technology and building ecosystems. Her work supported multi-billion-dollar portfolios globally. Emi advises enterprises, startups, and investors on AI strategy and GTM execution, focused on designing and accelerating real-world AI adoption and monetization across all industries.

Paul Chitlik has written for all the major networks and studios in English and in Spanish. He was story editor for MGM/UA'S "The New Twilight Zone," and staff writer for Showtime's sitcom "Brothers." He has written features for Rysher Entertainment, NuImage, Promark, Mainline Releasing, and others. He has directed episodes and been coordinating producer for “Real Stories of the Highway Patrol” and “U.S. Customs Classified.” He wrote and produced “Alien Abduction,” the first network movie shot on digital video for UPN. He wrote, produced, and directed “Ringling Brothers Revealed” a special for The Travel Channel. (He had been a roustabout for Circus Vargas years earlier.) Most recently he wrote, produced and directed “The Wedding Dress,” for Amazon Prime. He received a Writers Guild of America award nomination for his work on "The Twilight Zone" and a GLAAD Media Award nomination for "Los Beltrán,” a Telemundo show. He won a Genesis Award for a Showtime Family movie.  He has taught in the MFA programs of UCLA, the University of Barcelona’s film school ESCAC, Cuba’s film school EICTV, Chile’s film school UNIACC, The University of Zulia in Venezuela, The Panamerican University in Mexico City, The Story Academy of Sweden and as a clinical associate professor at Loyola Marymount University. Now writing full time again and living near his grandson in Chapel Hill, NC, with wife, television producer Beth McCauley. His book, “Rewrite,” is used in film schools around the world (in English, Chinese, and Korean). His latest novel is “Lies, All Lies.” His latest book on screenwriting is “The Screenwriting Sensei.”

paulchitlik.com

Jody Wheeler has been thinking about machines, meaning, and creativity long before it was a hot take. A filmmaker, educator, and former mental health professional, he's spent 25 years studying how humans make meaning — and is now professionally skeptical about what happens when we outsource it. He consults on AI through Fractal Boundaries LLC, currently teaches at Pacific Oaks College, and has film credits including The Dark Place, Judas Kiss, and Hippopotamus.

Brett Leonard, Legendary Director, "Lawnmower Man" “Virtuosity,” Co-Founder/CCO, UBIQUITY VX: For over 30 years, Brett Leonard has been an award-winning film maker and technologist at the forefront of the digital media revolution. He is widely recognized as a top thought-leader in Virtual Reality since introducing the concept and term to popular culture as the Director/Writer of the seminal hit cult-classic film "Lawnmower Man" starring Pierce Brosnan, which is also one of the most commercially successful independent films of all time, grossing over $200MM globally in all markets on a $5MM budget. Brett was one of the first to pioneer modern stereoscopic techniques and photo-realistic CGI in his hit IMAX 3D film “T-Rex” (100MM on IMAX screens alone), and introduced American audiences to Russell Crowe in his film “Virtuosity” (which also starred Denzel Washington) along with many other talents both in front of and behind the camera.Brett’s work as a visionary Director/Producer/Futurist has always pushed the edge of innovation in the entertainment industry, and continues to do so with a project slate dedicated to defining a new process of content production for the emerging era of Generative A.I. and Immersive Interactive StoryWorlds. Brett directed “Hollywood Rooftop”, the first film to be shot in both 360VR and traditional cinema, combining the mediums for the first time with Generative A.I., and the theatrical feature film “Triumph”, starring Academy Award Nominee Terrence Howard, star of the hit television series “Empire”, and RJ Mitte, star of the legendary series “Breaking Bad”. - “Triumph” won the Ruderman Family Foundation’s award for authentic portrayal of disability in a motion picture, and was released broadly in theaters. Brett has several new feature projects slated for production in 2025. Brett recently co-founded a company called UbiquityVX (UVX1) with business pioneer David Kerzner and world-renown clinical VR researcher Dr. Albert 'Skip' Rizzo, with a mission to provide groundbreaking Virtual Therapies on an assessable easy-to-use web-based platform that can be described as the “Netflix of Interactive Health, Wellness and Performance” Brett recently completed work with the Entertainment Technology Center at USC (founded by George Lucas) as a core team member of the Narrative Context Protocol (NCP) project, which is a next-generation A.I. interactive story-engineering format designed to enable creative professionals a developmental process for both traditional legacy storytelling forms, and the new medium of emergent Interactive Narrative StoryWorlds. Brett’s involvement with the NCP project is indicative of his passion for pioneering new mediums of human interaction and story. Brett’s core philosophy, born out in all of his work is: “To empower people to create and experience transformative story, character, and emotion in any medium, no matter what the technology being used to enable it”.