Kathleen Cohen, XR Immersive, Experience Strategist, The Collaboratorium

Kathleen Cohen is an XR Experience Strategist and Tech Humanist with over 25+ years building both user and guest experiences. Kathleen’s background includes working as a Creative Producer for DreamWorks Interactive, IBM Centers for Innovation and Disney Parks & Resorts. Kathleen also was the former Vice President of Digital Innovation & Integration for the National Constitution Center helping to tell the contemporary story of the U.S. Constitution while also contributing to U.S. Heritage Tourism. She has a personal commitment to the Persons with Disabilities community, as well as the Black Tech Mentorship Platform community. Kathleen sits on the Board of Holoride (Munich); recent winners of the 2021 SXSW Pitch for Best in Show and Entertainment, Gaming, Content. For the past three years, Kathleen also has been the Jury Chair and Keynote speaker at the Aurea Awards hosted by MackNext and Europa-Park.

Kathleen’s consultancy, the Collaboratorium focuses on immersive and exponential tech, AI/ML, XR and spatial computing projects as it relates to virtual humans/digital twins inside themed attractions, location based entertainment and other business vertical world-building projects. Kathleen focuses on product development with future storytelling narratives. Her interest is the near future of man+machine and the human expansion supporting it. Kathleen and her team are currently building a Likeness & Legacy project. Her latest talks are: The Future and Present Converge(s) and Meet Your Digital Twin. 

Amy Jupiter, Creative Producer, Experience Designer, VFX Supervisor, Proprioceptive Hacker, Virgin Galactic

With a broad background in film, animation and Visual FX, Ms. Jupiter is currently working with Virgin Galactic as a Creative Producer and Experience Designer. Most recently, at Walt Disney Imagineering, Ms. Jupiter helped create the next generation of award-winning immersive experiences and attractions for the Walt Disney theme parks. Ms. Jupiter began her Disney career as an intern, working her way up to Executive Creative Producer, Executive Visual FX Supervisor and Experience Designer for attractions in every corner of the Disney globe including Jim Henson’s MuppetVison 3D at both Walt Disney World and Disneyland parks; The Magic Lamp Theatre at Tokyo DisneySea; and Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for the Sunken Treasure at Shanghai Disneyland. In fact, that amazing new addition to the Pirates tradition won Ms. Jupiter and her teams the prestigious VES Award from the Visual FX Society for Outstanding Visual FX in a Special Venue. Ms. Jupiter and her teams were nominated the next year for two attractions in the same category.  While James Cameron’s Avatar: Flight of Passage took home the award, making Ms. Jupiter a back-to-back winner at the VES awards, she is most proud of Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout for its unexpected transformation from its roots as the beloved Tower of Terror attraction which she had worked on earlier in her career. These two most recent attractions also won THEA Awards for Outstanding Attractions, 2017 and 2018.