FOUNDERS
ERICA MILSOM and TODD SHAIMAN are Oscar-winning and Emmy-nominated filmmakers who bring a combined 30+ years in leadership at Pixar Animation Studios. Our filmography includes an array of stories that have charmed audiences worldwide in theaters and on Disney+.
Todd is also an industry leader in immersive storytelling and generative AI. He founded Google’s award-winning Immersive Arts team and now leads efforts to develop Google's approach to AI and the future of teamwork.
Erica began her career working in global and local non-profits, connecting with communities to enact change. In film and animation, she has been heralded as a game-changer for her film "Loop" and was recently selected for the prestigious Rockefeller Residency at Lake Como to advance Ryzo's work to drive change through next-generation storytelling & activation.
We started Ryzo Studios to bring together artists from around the globe to tell stories that do more: spark action, foster hope, and activate change.
ADVISORS
Dr. Gowri Aragam is a Psychiatrist and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at UCSF where she focuses on womens' mental health and integrated care.
Prior to UCSF, Dr. Aragam served on faculty at Mass General Hospital/Harvard Medical School and held a visiting position at Stanford where she was the co-founder of Stanford Brainstorm Lab for Mental Health Innovation. With her team, she developed and directed the first university-wide course on mental health innovation, and was published in JAMA for her work on culturally humble design.
Dr. Aragam has served as an advisor and consultant to numerous mental health tech companies including Healthy Gamer and BetterUp, and was recognized by Fast Company for her work with Pinterest.
Dr. Jon Brandt is an Adobe Research Fellow, spanning a broad range of topics in computer vision, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.
He founded the Media Intelligence Lab at Adobe, an interdisciplinary research team that contributed vision and imaging technologies across Adobe’s product line. The lab has a vibrant research program in natural language understanding spanning Adobe’s PDF ecosystem and general user interaction, intelligent help, and search.
Since 2021, he led the effort to re-envision photo editing powered by AI and machine learning.
Prior to joining Adobe in 2003, he served on the technical staff at Silicon Graphics. His first job out of school was at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab, as engineer on the Galileo project.He received his master’s and Ph.D. in computer science at the University of California, Davis, and a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois.
KEVIN Nolting is the editor of multiple Academy Award-winning films and a well-known ‘story whisperer’ whose insights helped to make films like Finding Nemo, Up, Inside Out, and Soul audience favorites.
Kevin is an Accident and Eddy award-winning film editor with over 37 years of experience. After serving an apprenticeship in Hollywood with iconic film editors like Robert C. Jones and Richard Chew, he’s spent the last 22 years at Pixar Animation Studios, where he edited the Academy Award-winning films Up, Inside Out and Soul and contributed to many others, including Finding Nemo and Wall-e.
He recently directed the short film '22 vs. Earth’ for Disney+.
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