Current Board

FRANCESCA RODRIGUEZ SAWAYA

Experiential Designer, Technologist, Educator

Francesca is currently crafting narratives as a Content Designer at Cisco Systems + exploring the linkages between weaving and computational thinking through the WeavingXCoding Project. You can find her researching how to bridge tradition with technology in order to tell better stories.

Her latest project Warping the Future, is a digital exhibit about the connection between the history of weaving and the history of computing.

Jalina Stewart

XR Producer & Strategist

Jalina Stewart began her 10-year journey into the XR space working with 360-film and VR platforms that provided viewers access to premium interactive video content. Exploring new modes of storytelling, she subsequently joined emerging tech group Navteca, known for combining data visualization with 360 camera footage to tell climate and science stories. Delving deeper into the world of emerging technologies, Jalina began her Mixed Reality deep dive in 2018, spending 2 years overseeing the build of NYC’s first premium volumetric video capture studio. As an XR evangelist, Jalina Stewart has been working with Business Finland, the Government of Finland’s Innovation & Trade Group, Since December 2021 to introduce Finnish companies to the US, starting with the first virtual XR Accelerator X MSFT Garage.

LaJuné McMillian

Artist, Educator

LaJuné is a Multidisciplinary Artist, and Educator creating art that integrates performance, extended reality, and physical computing to question our current forms of communication. They are passionate about discovering, learning, manifesting, and stewarding spaces for liberated Black Realities and the Black Imagination. LaJune believes in making by diving into, navigating, critiquing, and breaking systems and technologies that uphold systemic injustices to decommodify our bodies, undo our indoctrination, and make room for different ways of being.

Ashley Zelinskie

Artist

Ashley Zelinskie is Brooklyn-based conceptual artist utilizing a post-New Media approach, wherein the media employed are merely vehicles in service of underlying concepts, she is attempting the process of translating our vast history into an eternal and universal language, while focusing a lens on our place as a small part of a larger whole. Her works span a variety of media, from large- and small-scale sculpture to canvas and print works, each created using cutting edge technology such as 3D printing, computer-guided laser cutting, and satellite plating technology. Her work focuses on visualizing data in abstract forms and finding new and interesting ways to describe complex ideas.