David Cordon, Producer | Writer/Director

David Cordon is a Spanish–British filmmaker and visual effects producer with a background spanning chemistry, music and film production.

Over more than a decade in visual effects, Cordon has held senior production roles at DNEG, Framestore, Cinesite and NVIZ, where he served as Head of Production. His credits include The Jungle Book, Avengers: Endgame, Christopher Robin, Annihilation and True Detective: Night Country.

He also created and hosted Pixel Puzzle, a limited podcast series that gives voice to the people behind contemporary visual effects, reflecting his ongoing interest in the human beings inside complex machines.

Kim Davidson, President of SideFX and VES Board Chair

Kim Davidson is the President and CEO of SideFX^®, a company he co-founded in 1987. SideFX is a world-leading innovator of advanced 3D animation and special effects Houdini^® software.

Davidson has received three Scientific and Technical Awards from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In 2018, he accepted on behalf of SideFX, the Academy Award of Merit for the creation and development of Houdini. In 2015, Davidson was co-recipient of the Canadian Digital Media Pioneer Award, and in 2019 he and other SideFX team members accepted a Technology and Engineering Emmy award in the Cost-Effective Crowd Simulation Tools category.  Davidson was an EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2021 Ontario Winner; received the J. Wesley Graham Medal in Computing and Innovation from the University of Waterloo; and is a member of Sheridan College Computer Animation PAC (Program Advisory Committee).

Davidson was the first Chair of the VES Toronto Section and has served on the Toronto Section board for eight years. He has served on the global VES Board of Directors for eight years, on the Membership Committee for eight years, and on several VES ad hoc committees. Davidson has also been a VES mentor and played an active role in the Society’s recent strategic planning process on its Impact & Visibility and Globalization sub-committees.

Steve MacPherson, CTO, Milk Visual Effects

Steve MacPherson is Chief Technology Officer at Milk VFX, where he leads the studio’s technology strategy, overseeing systems, pipeline, editorial, and research and development. Appointed October 2022, he is responsible for advancing Milk’s technical capabilities and supporting its continued expansion across high-end film and episodic visual effects production. 

MacPherson is a highly experienced technology leader in the VFX industry, with a career spanning several decades. He is a co-founder of DNEG, and served as Chief Technology Officer at Framestore for ten years. Earlier in his career, he was Head of Technical Operations at MPC, where he played a key role in developing and scaling production technology.

Known for his ability to bridge creative and technical disciplines, MacPherson has played a key role in developing scalable production infrastructure and pioneering workflows that support complex, large-scale visual effects projects. His work continues to focus on integrating emerging technologies with creative production to drive innovation across the VFX industry. 

Steve is also a member of BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) and a longstanding member of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery).

Kate Xagoraris, Pipeline and Production Coordinator at Strada XR | VFX Professor | VES Board of Managers Member, Strada XR

Kate Xagoraris is a visual effects artist from Toronto, Canada. Over the past few years, as a visual effects artist, Kate has primarily worked as a Houdini Artist, and she has served as a professor of Visual Effects at numerous colleges and universities, including Humber, Conestoga, CG Spectrum, Universidad de Monterrey, and The Animation Workshop at VIA University College.

Kate currently operates a website that hosts countless articles and information on the various uses of Sidefx's Houdini, as well as broader industry facts and resources. Some well-known productions Kate has been a part of have been, 1923(2025), Beacon 23(2023), Nightmare Alley (2021), Raised By Wolves (2022), Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania(2023) While working in the film and TV industry, it has developed open-source introductory toolkits for SideFX Houdini to visualize proteins and other scientific datasets. 

Kate is currently a board member of the VES Toronto Section and a member of the VES Archives, Education, and Outreach Committee. Through her work with VES, she has launched the Pixel Pioneers Series to feature and tell the stories of pioneers in the Toronto industry and to start initiatives to preserve the local and national culture of VFX in Canada. 

Kate is also a historian researching the history of the visual effects industry in Canada and, over the past four years, has been compiling her findings in a yet-to-be-released book. This book will be an accumulative deep dive into the companies that make the Canadian VFX industry possible, the software architecture behind it, and the history of the broader entertainment policies that underpin it. 

She is currently studying Data Science and Machine Learning at the University of Waterloo and, in the past year, completed courses in VFX Supervision, Production Management for VFX, Animation, and Product Management. As well as completed 3D animation studies at Humber College.