Speakers

Meet the speakers leading the
Miami Immersive Summit 2026

Creative Director for Disney Live Entertainment with Disney
Signature Experiences

Jennifer Bascom

  • Jennifer Bascom is a Creative Director for Disney Live Entertainment with Disney Signature Experiences. She is guided by creating story experiences that leave Guests feeling more connected and more invested in the joy of being human together. 

    Her writing and directing has taken her across land, sea, and a galaxy far, far away. Some creative projects include ship-wide entertainment on the Disney Destiny and theDisney Treasure for Disney Cruise Line, Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser,Cedar Fair’s Tricks and Treats and WinterFest, Second City Theatricals, Legends of Frontierland, ComedySportzLA, the Bezark Company, Disneyland Paris, and multiple brand collaborations.

    Jennifer has written and created content for television including True Beauty, Comedy IQ with Wayne Brady,Attack of the Show, World Cup Comedy, U-Jokes, and the award-winning web-series Relation-Fix. 

    Other original works include: WBOO A Halloween Radio Show, head scriptwriter for NBCU/ Tic Toc games, and her screenplay Nutmeg & Mistletoe debuts this Christmas!

    In addition to creative endeavors Jennifer’s speaking engagements include the Doha Film Festival in Qatar, ABC Writers Program, Walt Disney Imagineering, Disney Television Discovers Talent, and a 2018 TED Talk on how the skills of improvisation quiet the brain’s addiction to being right.

Heidi Boisvert, PhD

Technology Director
Theatre of the Mind

  • Heidi Boisvert, PhD is an interdisciplinary artist, experience designer, creative technologist, and academic researcher who interrogates the neurobiological and socio-cultural effects of media and technology. She studies the role of the body, the senses, and emotion in human perception and social change. Boisvert is mapping the world’s first media genome, while taking great care with its far-reaching ethical implications. She also architects expanded reality and transmedia storytelling experiences, and devises large-scale networked dance and theatre using biocreative technology. She founded futurePerfect lab, a creative agency and think-tank that works with social justice organizations to design playful emerging media campaigns to transform the public imagination. She also co-founded XTH, a company creating novel modes of expression through biotechnology and the human body. She worked with David Byrne on Theater of the Mind, an immersive theater piece and co-curated EdgeCut, a live performance series that explores human-digital relationships. Boisvert is Associate Professor of AI & the Arts at the University of Florida, a Senior Research Fellow at the Norman Lear Center, a research affiliate in the Open Documentary Lab at MIT, and a member of NEW INC’s Creative Science track. Her work has been showcased at venues including EMPAC, New York Live Arts, Banff, the New Museum, Los Angeles Music Center and Waag, and featured in TIME, Wired, Fast Company, The Atlantic, NPR, and The New York Times.

Asher Young

Executive Producer & Creative
Director Masquerade


  • ASHER YOUNG 

    Founder of Asher Young Studio 

    Asher Young is a creative director, producer, and artist. Growing up in New York City, he designed theatrical haunted houses instead of going trick-or-treating, trained with a vaudeville magician, and worked music concerts and festivals. Young’s current work spans immersive theater, music, fashion, and art and media installations. He has put A$AP Rocky through physical and psychological tests on the sales floor of Sotheby’s; tied up 40 audience members in shibari ropes and served them tuna after an aerial duet; developed a three-dimensional hologram to represent memory and physicalize lost loved ones; brought together 30 artists and researchers to project onto Yale’s rare book and manuscript library; and woven 33,000 milliwatts of light through a garden of trees to represent mycorrhizal networks. Collaborators include Dior, Sotheby’s, Yale, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Big Apple Circus, Double Chicken Please, The Valentine Museum, Virgin Voyages, and Korean music collective DPR, in addition to real-estate and cultural development partners around the world. Most recently, he served as Executive Producer and Creative Director of Masquerade, an immersive version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera. Young studied Computing and the Arts at Yale University, where he received the Susan J. Smith Arts Prize; he has also been recognized with the LIT Award for his piece Living Memory. 

Lanné Bennett

Founder of
The Lanné Company

  • Lanné Bennett owns a consulting company, The Lanné Company, with over 25 years of experience in commercial real estate. She is also the Executive Vice President for National Accounts at URBANLIME Real Estate based in the Arts District in LA. She has worked with both landlords and tenants globally. Bennett has worked with various full-service restaurants, retailers, entertainment, immersive, experiential, LBVR, retailtainment, impactainment, edutainment concepts, and other IP she cannot talk about due to NDA’s.

    Some of the tenants she has worked with in her real estate career are Felix and Paul Studios, Phantom Peak, Meow Wolf, Merlin, Andretti Karting Experience, The Crayola Experience, Hidden Worlds, Beat the Bomb, The Giant, Dutch Wheels to name a few.

    Bennett has held senior level positions at Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield (URW), Starwood Retail Partners, Cypress Equities, Steiner and Associates, Colonial Properties Trust, and Glimcher Realty Trust. Madison Marquette has also been one of her clients.  At Starwood Retail Partners, Bennett helped underwrite, purchase, and formulate comprehensive investment thesis for over $7B in assets and underwrote over 200 assets throughout the US. Her knowledge of every major market around the world is unprecedented.

    Bennett’s skill set for Landlord and Developers includes investment thesis, redevelopment, place making, merchandising, leasing, special projects, and analytics for Landlords. For Tenants she does business development, strategic real estate planning and roll outs and advises the Creative Community, Studios and Producers.

Avra Jain

Founder of The Vagabond Group

  • Avra Jain doesn’t just develop properties—she transforms forgotten spaces into cultural landmarks. A former Wall Street bond trader turned urban alchemist, Avra brings financial precision and artistic vision to real estate, creating places that pulse with purpose. Her revival of Miami’s iconic Vagabond Hotel helped ignite the MiMo renaissance, while Factory Town—once a derelict industrial site—is now a global creative hub delivering returns of over 400% within an Opportunity Zone.

    For Avra, buildings are vessels of identity, culture, and human connection. Her work bridges commerce and soul, from her Sundance-winning documentary Dark Days to earning her own day in Miami-Dade County. Whether restoring midcentury motels or reinventing industrial spaces as cultural engines, Avra leads with the conviction that design can be a force for good—one that makes cities not just more beautiful, but more meaningful.

Montana Masback

Co-Founder of Tequila Town

  • Montana Masback is a multidisciplinary creative entrepreneur, and experiential strategist with over two decades of shaping environments that bring people together through feeling, story, and atmosphere. His work lives at the intersection of hospitality, design, and narrative, where spaces are not just built, but felt.

    Emerging from the raw, dimly lit energy of New York City nightlife, Montana developed a foundation rooted in analog experience long before immersive became industry language. He learned early how to move people without screens through music, spatial tension, human connection, and a deep understanding of vibe. That instinct continues to define his approach today.

    Across restaurant ventures, architectural concepts, and large scale experiential builds, Montana has transformed spaces into destinations, places that resonate because they are grounded in story and elevated through intention. His work reflects a belief that great environments are not designed for attention, but for connection.

    With a diverse creative toolkit spanning design, music, branding, and operations, he approaches each project holistically, balancing imagination with clarity and vision with execution. He is known for his ability to synthesize ideas into cohesive, living experiences that feel both timeless and immediate.

Chris J. Slater

Assoc. Principal Director,
Music & Special Projects,
South Florida PBS

  • Chris J. Slater develops premium original productions, immersive experiences, and strategic partnerships for South Florida PBS, helping shape the station’s future-facing content slate. His recent work includes Four Seasons for the Five Senses, an immersive music experience with Nu Deco Ensemble and Miami Beach Bandshell as well as the nature documentary The Everglades: A Symphony of Life featuring a performance by the New World Symphony. 

    Previously, as Vice President of Global Content at Warner Music Group, he led development and production across Atlantic, Elektra, Warner Bros., and Rhino Records, packaging concerts and documentaries for broadcast with Michael Buble, Wiz Khalifa, The Doobie Brothers, Kelly Clarkson, Tom Petty, and the Grateful Dead.

    At AOL/Verizon Originals, Chris served as Senior Director of Creative Development and Production, overseeing a slate of 30 award-winning series, including the Primetime Emmy Award-winning Park Bench with Steve Buscemi, Making a Scene with James Franco, #CandidlyNicole with Nicole Richie (VH-1), City Ballet with Sarah Jessica Parker, and Anthony Anderson Eats America (The Food Network).

    At Yahoo Music, he executive produced the Pepsi Smash Top 40 Music Program, working with hundreds of artists including Taylor Swift, Kanye West, Rihanna, Pharrell, Coldplay, John Legend, Gwen Stefani, Mariah Carey, and Mary J. Blige.

Joyce Belloise

Chief Operations Officer,
South Florida PBS

  • A 30-year media professional, Joyce Belloise serves as Chief Operating Officer at South Florida PBS, where she also oversees Content. She manages a creative team of producers, videographers, editors and interactive media staff dedicated to serving the community with educational content that celebrates South Florida’s diversity. From documentaries and children’s programming to digital and immersive content, Joyce helps guide more than twenty South Florida PBS original productions each year.

    Working collaboratively with SFPBS leadership, Joyce has helped advance the station’s work in identifying, licensing and mounting educational immersive exhibits as a new revenue stream and extension of the public media mission. Through this effort, South Florida PBS has emerged as a pioneer among public television stations exploring how immersive exhibits can engage audiences beyond the screen. Joyce also supports the SFPBS team’s production of original immersive content designed to complement these exhibits and deepen their educational impact.

    Committed to making public television more inclusive, Joyce works closely with local independent producers and filmmakers to develop content for broadcast. Her work as a producer has garnered nine regional Emmy Awards, six Telly Awards, three National Communicator Awards and a Louis Wolfson Film & Television Award. A Miami native, she has produced a variety of documentaries and series including New Florida, Florida Roadtrip, Check, Please! South Florida, Imagining a New Florida and the Emmy Award-winning Buen Provecho! Florida’s Spanish Flavor. She also wrote and produced the internationally distributed Art Basel: A Portrait and Taste the Florida Keys.

    Joyce received a Bachelor of Arts in Communications from Barry University. She has served on the Board of the NATAS Suncoast Chapter and is a recipient of its 2022 Silver Circle Award.

Andrew Scoville

Director
Theater of the Mind

  • Andrew Scoville
    is a director specializing in immersive, interactive theater and entertainment. He has a passion for integrating science ideas into theatrical experiences. Select credits include Theater of the Mind (DCPA and Goodman), Travels (Ars Nova), Money Heist: The Experience (NYC production with Netflix/Fever), The Brobot Johnson Experience (Bushwick Starr), Escape the Planet (NY Hall of Science commission with astronomer Moiya McTier). Associate director credits include: Here Lies Love (dir. Alex Timbers, Broadway, Public Theater, National Theater UK, Seattle Rep), Sweeney Todd (dir. Bill Buckhurst, Barrow Street Theater). He works as a Creative Director for immersive experiences with various creative studios. He teaches Advanced Directing and Playable Theater at Playwrights Horizons Theater School, NYU Tisch. Co-director Fresh Ground Pepper NYC.

Mikhael Tara Garver

Founder
Culture House Immersive

  • Mikhael Tara Garver, an immersive pioneer for over 2 decades, is the Founder of Culture House Immersive; was the Director of Immersive Experience of the THEA award-winning Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser; staff director of A.R.T.’s Sleep No More; and Creative Director for the band Great Caesar ( fandom-building journey at SXSW that 100x’d their fans in 8 days).  She’s created award-winning experiences for AMC Television, Amazon, National Park Service, Bloomberg, BBDO, Hormel, Smirnoff, IDEO, Facebook, and Virgin. She is a founding board member of the Immersive Experience Institute; was awarded the first-ever immersive commissions from The Kennedy Center and National Theatre of Scotland; a multi-year grantee of Pop Culture Collaborative; an International Sacatar Fellow; and a Lead Creative Consultant Internationally for Walt Disney Imagineering. Garver has spent her career consulting and building business models in the immersive entertainment field while fundamentally centering artists, audience, and culture change. She is currently launching Culture House Immersive’s Inaugural Incubator.

Abraham Burickson

Co-Founder of Odyssey Works

  • ABRAHAM BURICKSON, Co-Founder of Odyssey Works and Director of the Experience Design Certificate Program, has spent twenty-five years exploring the relationship between what we make and how it is experienced. Trained in architecture at Cornell University and in poetry and playwriting at the Michener Center for Writers, he has also studied the transformative power of designed experience with the Whirling Dervishes of Turkey, the Shuar of the Ecuadorian Amazon, and with countless artists, designers, and students through Odyssey Works. He spent decades organizing communities around the creation of transformative experiences for what the New York Times called “a tiny but infinitely more affected audience.” He is also the founder of The Long Architecture Project, which rethinks architectural practice from the perspective of Experience Design. As a consultant and designer he has worked with big tech companies, religious organizations, local arts councils, and non-profits working to end hunger and stop the AI apocalypse. He has won prizes, lectured and taught widely, given a TEDxtalk, and was once hired by German television to kidnap an American skateboarding champion. His book on Experience Design was published by Yale University Press in 2023.

Zach Morris

Co-Artistic Director of Third Rail Projects

  • Zach Morris (he/him/his) is an immersive theater director, experience designer, consultant, and educator. He is Co-Artistic Director of Third Rail Projects, a New York–based performance company internationally recognized for creating works that place the audience at the very heart of the storytelling.

    For over two decades, Third Rail Projects has been hailed as one of the foremost companies in the field, trailblazing the creation of site-specific, immersive, and experiential works. Zach is co-creator of the immersive theater hits Then She Fell, The Grand Paradise, Sweet & Lucky with the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, and Ghost Light at Lincoln Center Theater’s Claire Tow Theater, among others.

    He has been honored with numerous awards, including a Chita Rivera Award and two BESSIE Awards; projects he has collaborated on have garnered a Drama Desk nomination, a Peabody Award, and an Emmy Award. His work has been presented nationally and internationally with the support of grants, commissions, and residencies, and he has taught, mentored, and created new platforms to support artists at home and abroad.

    Zach believes memorable, meaningful experiences happen when audiences become the heroes of their own journey. Attended to with compassion, thoughtfulness, and care, these experiences can be transformative, creating connection and empathy—something needed now more than ever.

Noah Nelson

Founder of No Proscenium

  • Noah Nelson is the founder of No Proscenium, a publication dedicated to exploring the immersive and experiential arts, its sister site Everything Immersive, and co-founder of the non-profit organization The Immersive Experience Institute. As a producer he has led multiple immersive industry events including The Next Stage (2025, 2023) the Los Angeles Immersive Invitational (2019, 2022, 2024, 2025), the Denver Immersive Gathering (2022), and the Immersive Design Summit (2018 & 2019). His extensive experience consulting on immersive work includes Camp Christmas (Denver Center for the Performing Arts), and working with Tender Claws to develop initial casting protocols for The Under Presents (Meta Quest).  He is proud member of the faculty of the CalArts School of Theater and holds a bachelor's in Theatre Arts from San Francisco State University. His reporting has been heard on NPR's All Things Considered and APM's Marketplace.

Kierna Conner

Experience designer, creative producer & performer

  • Kierna Conner is an experience designer, creative producer, performer, and educator working at the intersection of storytelling, play, and human behavior. Based in Orlando, Florida — and also considering New York City and Arizona home — her work spans immersive theatre, themed entertainment, live events, and interactive installations. She has served on original creative development teams for projects with Disney Imagineering, Universal Studios, Six Flags Fiesta Texas, Floating Tower Productions, Culture House Immersive, ImmerseFest Orlando, Hawkmoon Immersive, and more; bringing narrative depth, systems thinking, and guest-centered design to both large-scale and independent experiences.

    She began her career as an actor trained in classical and musical theatre, and that foundation continues to shape how she directs, writes, and builds experiences from the inside out; prioritizing embodiment, agency, and emotional payoff. Over time, her practice expanded behind the scenes into creative producing, experience architecture, and team leadership, where she translates ambitious ideas into executable systems and guides multidisciplinary teams from concept through delivery.

    As an educator and coach, Kierna teaches artists, creatives, and organizations how to design meaningful engagement by blending performance training, behavioral insight, and experiential strategy. She is particularly interested in how people make decisions inside fictional worlds and how play can serve as a tool for learning, connection, and transformation.

    Outside of her professional work, she is an avid film buff, amateur escape room enthusiast, and seeker of strange museums and collaborative adventures; constantly researching the next great experience by stepping inside it.

David Feiner

Albany Park Theater Project Co-Executive Director

  • David Feiner (he/him/his) is an award-winning director, producer, and educator. He is a co-founder and co-executive director of the acclaimed Albany Park Theater Project, a Chicago company where youth artists devise world-class performances inspired by the real-life stories of their immigrant and first-generation community. Over three decades, David has worked as a co-director, co-creator, and/or producer on all of APTP’s more than 25 world premieres. For nearly 15 years, David has led APTP’s collaboration with Third Rail Projects, including Learning Curve (named one of the Top Ten Shows of 2016 by the Chicago Tribune, Time OutMagazine, and the Chicago Sun-Times) and Port of Entry (Chicago Tribune and NoProscenium best of 2023 lists), which continue to run in Chicago after nearly 3 years and 200 performances

Sadah Espii Proctor

Director of Immersive Media South Florida PBS

  • Sadah Espii Proctor is a director and creative producer working across hybrid documentary and immersive storytelling. Her work explores diasporic memory, ritual, and Black cultural experience through cinematic and experiential forms.

    Originally trained in theatre and performance, her practice is rooted in dance and devised ensemble work, with early explorations in interactive sound shaping her approach to spatial storytelling. Her work spans collaborations with artists including André M. Zachery, Nichole Canuso, Sasha Velour, and Soul Science Lab, as well as the creation of large-scale projection and multimedia environments for global brands, artists, and nonprofit organizations including Puma, Birkenstock, Mary J. Blige, and the Celtic FC Foundation.

    An Onassis ONX Member, SOZO Fellow, and NEW INC alum, she contributes to a cross-sector community advancing new models for creative practice and immersive media. Her projects include adrift: the bayou project (Lincoln Center); Ancestral Futurisms (The Alliance for Media Arts + Culture); and Girl Icon (VR for Good). Premiering at SXSW and Tribeca Festival, Girl Icon screened at festivals internationally and was exhibited at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights. The project was nominated for Best Digital Narrative at Sheffield DocFest and named one of Forbes’ Top 50 XR Experiences of 2019. She co-produced Futures We Dream, a documentary series commissioned for the Smithsonian FUTURES Exhibition.

    She serves as Director of Immersive Media at South Florida PBS, where she leads the station’s immersive media program— the first of its kind within PBS. Through her artistic and institutional work, she advances immersive storytelling rooted in community, cultural memory, and public impact.

Jeneissy Azcuy

Chief Marketing & Education Officer, South Florida PBS

  • Jeneissy Azcuy is a results-driven C-suite marketing executive with more than 25 years of progressive leadership across public media, entertainment, and mission-driven organizations. A bilingual communicator fluent in English and Spanish, she brings a rare combination of strategic authority and hands-on execution to every initiative she leads.

    Currently serving as Chief Marketing & Education Officer at South Florida PBS, Jeneissy holds enterprise-wide responsibility spanning brand strategy, integrated marketing, communications, creative services, education outreach, community engagement, and immersive media operations across three broadcast stations and multiple digital platforms. She has architected a community engagement program that produces nearly 100 annual events across Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties, deepening the station's impact throughout South Florida's diverse communities.

    Beyond her professional achievements, Jeneissy is deeply committed to her community. She serves as a board member of Actors Playhouse at the Miracle Theatre and Power of the Heels and serves on Mayor Cava Levine Children's Commission. She is also a founding member of the Doral West Dade Woman's Club and a member of Leadership Florida Education Class 10. A passionate storyteller, she is also the co-author of Culebra, a historical fiction novel.

    Jeneissy holds a Master of Arts in Communications from Barry University and a Bachelor of Science from Florida International University.

Giancarlo Rodaz

Artistic Director of Area Stage in Miami

  • Giancarlo Rodaz is the Artistic Director of Area Stage in Miami. Since age 18, he has written, directed, and designed multiple award-winning immersive theatrical productions across South Florida and beyond. His groundbreaking approach to immersive theater began with a critically acclaimed production of the musical Annie, staged in a 1930s underground speakeasy that plunged audiences into Depression-era New York City.

    Rodaz is best known for his viral, large scale immersive reimaginings of Disney musicals—including Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, and Tarzan—created in creative collaboration with Disney Theatricals. These productions transformed venues into fully interactive environments where audiences moved through and took part in these beloved worlds. He most recently wrote and directed a musical adaptation of Coheed and Cambria’s bestselling concept album Good Apollo, You’re Burning Star IV for the S.S. Neverender aboard Norwegian Cruise Lines. Other standout directorial works include a collaboration with Cameron Mackintosh reimagining Lionel Bart’s Oliver! as an immersive production set inside a meticulously recreated Victorian workhouse, the original play-party-escape room hybrid Alice and the Mad Tea Party, and a multi-year run of original plays at MicroTheater Miami.

    At the heart of his work, Rodaz believes immersive storytelling is a powerful way to spark creativity and inspire young audiences to fall in love with the arts.

Joanne Benko

Senior Director, Programming at the Adrienne Arsht Center

  • Joanne "Jo" Benko is the Senior Director, Programming at the Adrienne Arsht Center and a Miami native. Jo's work spans jazz, Broadway/theater, popular entertainment, immersive and family programming that reflects both Miami’s global energy and the evolving landscape of live performance. Under Jo’s leadership, the Arsht has presented an extraordinary range of artists—from iconic acts like Sigur Rós, Kraftwerk, and De La Soul, to major voices in comedy and politics, including Kevin Hart and Vice President Kamala Harris. Known for her creative approach to programming, Jo builds seasons that honor artistic legacy while embracing risk, relevance, and cultural conversation. Driven by a belief that the arts are a vital part of every community, she continues to shape the Arsht Center as a vibrant space where culture, creativity, collaboration and women thrive.

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