Erin Reilly is the inaugural Director of Innovation and Entrepreneurship for Moody College. Erin is an entrepreneur, educator and strategist with 20 years of experience inventing new approaches, products, services and experiences about storytelling, engagement and learning through emergent technology. Erin is Board President of NAMLE (National Association for Media Literacy Education), and serves on the Executive Committee of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Interactive Media Peer Group, as well as advisory boards, such as Disney Junior and PBS Emmy-award winning Sci Girls. As an educator, Erin currently is Professor of Practice and Director of Innovation & Entrepreneurship for Moody College of Communication at University of Texas at Austin. In her roles, she designs and teaches courses on the future of media and entertainment, builds university-wide initiatives and fosters relationships with other academic institutions and industry partners. She has authored both academic and industry publications including Headspace VR on Medium, Fan Favorites in Strategy + Business, T is for Transmedia: Learning through Transmedia Play, and co-author of the book, Reading in a Participatory Culture.

As an entrepreneur, Erin founded ReillyWorks to creatively build connected experiences for families to get active and play together. Current projects in development include CARPE´, a new Augmented Reality and SMART Kit game and Winklebeans, a sensor-based toy that connects to a data-driven story world. She is known for her social entrepreneurship activities in founding Zoey’s Room, one of the first social media programs connected to a licensed afterschool program for young girls.

As a strategist, Erin consults with private and public companies in the areas of audience engagement, creative strategy and transmedia storytelling. She has been a frequent guest lecturer worldwide at universities as well as industry conferences such as SXSW, Sandbox Summit, and Nintendo Marketing Summit. She has helped to build the first Infinity FILM Festival in Beverly Hills.

Erin was a founding member of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Innovation Lab holding the positions of Managing Creative Director and Research Fellow. Before that, she was Research Director for Project New Media Literacies at MIT and also has conducted classes as a Visiting Lecturer at MIT’s Comparative Media Studies and Harvard University’s Project Zero Summer Institute. She is a graduate of Emerson College and has her Master of Fine Arts degree from Maine Media Workshops + College.

www.ebreilly.com
@ebreilly

Jeongmin Ham is a Master's student in Advertising. Jeongmin is currently working on her thesis about Avatars in video games and aims to go further into the research of virtual reality. She is the teaching assistant for Erin Reilly's courses: Audience Development & Engagement and Experimental Storytelling. Starting with a background in social media, Jeongmin learned about the immersive field and virtual/augmented reality after moving to Austin, Texas and taking part in events such as Social Media Week Austin (#SMWATX) and SXSW.

Jesse Easdon has been designing experiences all over the world for over 10 years. His main focus started in lighting and sound for theatre in high school but ended up getting his undergraduate degree in electrical areospace engineering. Since then he has tried to combine his love of engineering and entertainment. For the last three years, Jesse has been researching XR (extended reality) and its impact on engagement and storytelling at the University of Texas in Austin. Recently Jesse has consulted leading tech companies and lectured around the world on XR and audience engagement for live events.

Jasmine Peralez is a recent Moody graduate from Leander, TX, and in the midst of launching a career in social marketing! Somewhere in her college years, Erin Reilly helped Jasmine discover that her tendencies to fangirl over movies, theme parks, and more could be spun into a career in immersive entertainment. Ever since then, she has been happily chasing the dream. When she is not curating a relationship between brands and their audiences, you'll catch her trying to cook, obsessing over a tv show/movie/anime, dancing, and probably planning a trip to Disneyland.

Josh Ramirez is a Radio-Television-Film undergraduate with an appetite for Lo-Fi Hip Hop and a love for the virtual. As lab manager, Josh builds the imagine Lab Demo Library and helps students get familiar with emerging technology to build the next big thing here at UT. In addition, Josh facilitates the monthly imagine Meetups. Be sure to stop by the lab and he can show you around the world of immersive!