Speakers and Moderators So Far...

Speaker / Moderator Bios

Shoshana Abrass - Site Reliability Manager, Google Inc.
Shoshana Abrass is a Site Reliability Engineering manager at Google Inc. She is currently in the Technical Infrastructure division working on the reliability and uptime of Google's worldwide compute clusters. Prior to Google she worked for 15 years in visual effects technology. Abrass began her VFX career at Pacific Data Images in 1989....Full Bio

Patrice Avery - Head of Halon Studio/Producer
Patrice joined HALON in 2008 with over 20 years of Feature/TV Animation, VFX and Video Game production experience. Beginning at Creative Capers Entertainment, where she was able to develop, produce and manage a variety of animation and consumer product projects for most of the major studios including: Disney, DreamWorks, Warner Bros, Fox and Universal...Full Bio

Lydia Boggegoni - Senior Vice President of Artist Management, Sony Pictures Imageworks
Lydia Bottegoni is Senior Vice President of Artist Management at Sony Pictures Imageworks. Most recently she served as co-producer and led the digital production team on Sony Pictures Animation’s comedy blockbuster HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA. Previously, Bottegoni was the digital producer for the live-action/animated hit feature....Full Bio

Sheena Duggal - Visual Effects Supervisor and Director
Sheena Duggal is an acclaimed visual effects supervisor, director and compositor whose work has shaped Academy Award nominated features (SUPERMAN RETURNS, CAST AWAY, and THE POLAR EXPRESS) as well as blockbusters (CONTACT, SEX AND THE CITY 2, and SPIDERMAN 3) most recently serving as VFX Supervisor on THE HUNGER GAMES....Full Bio

Fawn Germer - Global Leadership Speaker & Best-Selling Author
Fawn Germer brings to life the wisdom and mentoring advice from her personal interviews with more than 300 famous women leaders for her bestselling books — one of which was an Oprah pick. Germer has distilled insights from interviews with everyone from Hillary Clinton to Susan Sarandon, Jane Goodall, Meg Whitman, Nobel Peace Prize winners, Olympic athletes...Full Bio

Janet Muswell Hamilton - Visual Effects Producer/Supervisor
Janet Muswell’s career in Visual Effects has spanned over two decades. She recently completed “The Muppets” for Disney as both the Visual Effects Producer and Visual Effects Supervisor, and served as the Visual Effects Producer on the Tom Cruise/Cameron Diaz feature “Knight & Day” for 20th Century Fox....Full Bio

Ruth Hauer - VFX Production Executive, The Walt Disney Company
Ruth Hauer has worked at the Walt Disney Company in the Feature Film VFX department for the past ten years. She is responsible for the management of visual effects from inception through delivery on half of the feature films at The Walt Disney Studios. She feels very fortunate to work for such a prestigious brand...Full Bio

Pam Hogarth - Director of Marketing, Look FX
Pam Hogarth, Director of Marketing, has spent over 25 years in the world of visual effects, 20 of which doing marketing and education (She was the only member of her kindergarten class to write press releases for production facilities.) Before joining LOOK she spent 12 years helping to build Gnomon School of Visual Effects into the premiere...Full Bio

Diana Ibanez - Visual Effects Producer, Sony Pictures Imageworks
Diana Ibanez is a visual effects producer at Sony Pictures Imageworks. She is currently working on OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL, an ambitious multidimensional feature directed by Sam Raimi, scheduled for release on March 8, 2013 Her previous Imageworks credits include CATS AND DOGS 2, VALKYRIE, and the Academy Award...Full Bio

Anne Kolbe - Sr. Vice President, Visual Effects, Warner Bros. Pictures

Kathleen Milnes - Assistant Chair, Digital Media at the Otis College of Art and Design and President and CEO of The Entertainment Economy Institute
Kathleen A. Milnes is Assistant Chair, Digital Media at the Otis College of Art and Design and President and CEO of The Entertainment Economy Institute, a research and education consulting firm committed to the workforce development needs of the entertainment and related creative sector industries. Milnes is also an Assistant Professor at Otis...Full Bio

Jacki Morie - Senior Researcher at Inst. for Creative Technologies/USC
Jacki Morie is a long standing artist using traditional and digital techniques. Pioneering digital work started in 1980. Her first artistic immersive virtual worlds work "Virtopia" (Done with partner Mike Goslin) premiered at the Florida Film Festival in 1993 and was designed to provoke emotional responses in visitors, taking VR out of its...Full Bio

Susan Zwerman - DGA UPM/Visual Effects Producer
She is a member of the Directors Guild of America (DGA), the Producers Guild of America (PGA) and the Visual Effects Society (VES). She chairs the DGA AD/UPM VFX/Digital Technology Committee, is a board member of the PGA New Media Council, and Chair of the VES Special Projects. (VES). Over the past ten years she has planned and hosted...Full Bio