CREATIVE DIRECTOR

John Gauntt is the Creative Director of the Seattle AI Film Festival and a founder of Culture & Code, a B2B podcast and newsletter focused on Generative AI for Creative Professionals.

John’s analysis of technology’s impact on media and marketing have been featured in The Economist and eMarketer while his public speaking includes SXSW, Infinity Festival Hollywood, the Monaco Media Forum, and Podcast Movement Evolutions.

John's audio stories and AI short films have won numerous awards including two Signal Awards from the Webbys organization, Official Selection for On Air Fest, AIFilm3, and the Philip K. Dick Science Fiction Festival.

He holds dual degrees in English Literature and Computer Information Systems plus a 2nd Degree Black Belt in Brazilian Jiujitsu. 

LinkedIn: @johngauntt

EVENT PRODUCER & TECHNICAL DIRECTOR

Keith Ancker graduated from Washington State University.

After several years as trade journalist working in yachting and entertainment, he transitioned into marketing and sales.

In 2015, he founded The Soundcasting Network, Seattle’s first podcast network.

SCN produced 20+ shows and several thousand episodes over six years, nabbed two SXSW appearances and a Signal Award for the sci-fi podcast Burner Face.

He is currently a partner in the Augmented City, which produces Culture & Code, as well as the co-founder and COO of Bonus Round, the Pacific Northwest’s premier gaming events organizer.

LinkedIn: @keithancker

TECHNICAL DIRECTOR

Carlos Imani is Founder & Executive Producer of The Elite Collective.

Carlos is a visionary storyteller and experience architect, transforming how mission-driven organizations engage their communities.

As the founder of The Elite Collective, Carlos leads with purpose, blending high-impact storytelling with seamless event production to amplify social change. From dynamic A/V experiences to strategic content creation, his work is rooted in operational excellence and cultural authenticity.

Based in Seattle, Carlos also spearheads the Elite Content Studio—a creative hub where community, innovation, and impact converge to bring bold ideas to life: Elevate. Amplify. Engage.

LinkedIn: @carlos-imani-41ab7a6

DAY OF PRODUCTION

Casey Carter is a multi-talented producer with a background in lifestyle events, live music, media production and creation.

With a deep passion for crafting and executing live events, Ms. Carter prides herself on her professionalism and ability to make things happen. 

Website: Miss Casey Carter

José Aragón is a Madrid-based photographer and AI digital artist known worldwide for his striking visual storytelling. He is CEO and Founder of Twqagency, a visual art and AI design studio for the fashion and luxury industries. 

Originally trained in Geology at the Complutense University of Madrid, Aragón found inspiration in the intricate patterns of nature, sparking his passion for photography. He later studied film direction at the New York Film Academy, further refining his narrative vision.

His career spans fashion, editorial, portraiture, and advertising, taking him to major creative hubs like London, New York, Milan, and Tokyo. His work, recognized for its unique perspective, has been featured in top fashion magazines and global campaigns. A pivotal moment came when he won the prestigious AFAEP Award in London, elevating him to international acclaim.

Beyond commercial success, Aragón’s fine art photography has been exhibited at institutions like The Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum and the artist360 Contemporary Week in Madrid. His ability to merge fashion with fine art has solidified his influence on global visual culture.

As a pioneer in AI-integrated fashion fine art, he redefines digital creativity. His collection Lumina won the Neural Fashion Contest’s Honorific Award, and he was named a Top 100 AI Creator for Innovation. His work in Bio-Digital Model fashion campaigns has been featured in Forbes and Vogue Business.

A Creative Partner at Runway ML, Aragón continues pushing the boundaries of AI-driven visual storytelling, cementing his legacy as a visionary at the intersection of photography, fashion, and digital art.

LinkedIn: Jose Aragon

Alvin Wang Graylin (汪丛青) is a recognized executive, author, investor, and technology pioneer with over three decades of experience driving innovation in AI, XR, and semiconductors. He currently serves as Global VP at HTC, following a distinguished tenure as China President from 2016 to 2023.

Graylin currently also holds leadership roles as Chairman of the Virtual World Society, Vice-Chair of the Industry of VR Alliance, and President of the Virtual Reality Venture Capital Alliance.

His latest book, Our Next Reality, published by Hachette Book Group, examines how AI and XR convergence will reshape society.

As a serial entrepreneur, Graylin founded four venture-backed startups across sectors including AI-driven conversational search (2005), mobile social networks (2008), AR local search (2010), and big data AI analytics (2000), spanning both China and the U.S.

As an active investor, he has funded over 100 startups and played a pivotal role in the establishment of HTC’s ViveX Global VR accelerator and SOSV’s mobile internet investment incubator. His corporate experience also includes senior roles at Intel/IBM (semiconductors) and Trend Micro/WatchGuard Technologies(cybersecurity).

A frequent keynote speaker at leading international conferences, Graylin is regularly featured in major media outlets, where he provides thought leadership on immersive computing (AR/VR/MR), artificial intelligence (AI), entrepreneurship, venture investing, and the Chinese market.

He holds an M.S. in Computer Science specializing in AI from MIT, an M.S. in Business from MIT’s Sloan School of Management, and graduated top of his class with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Washington, focusing on VR, AI, and CPU architecture. Fluent in English, Mandarin, and Cantonese, Graylin brings a unique perspective shaped by his Eurasian heritage and extensive experience living and working across both China and the U.S. His career seamlessly bridges technical and business roles, offering deep insights into the future of technology and global markets.

LinkedIn: @agraylin

Chaitra Vedullapalli is a renowned entrepreneur and a Go-To-Market (GTM) expert, revered for her proficiency in coaching tech founders. Her skills have guided hundreds of tech companies to leverage cloud market places that have built million-dollar practices.

She is the mastermind behind the 4P Cosell GTM Method, a groundbreaking framework designed to develop strategic GTM plans with Microsoft and Google. This method capitalizes on her 20+ years of corporate experience and her success in launching GTM with billions of dollars in economic impact.

Chaitra has been invited to speak on various stages including Microsoft Inspire, Google Summit at SXSW, and the United Nations. She’s also been featured in media publications such as Forbes, TechCrunch, and Success magazine.

Her achievements have been recognized with numerous awards, including the 2023 WPO Entrepreneur of the Year, Forbes 1000 Next, CIO100 Awards, and Microsoft Prestige Supplier Awards.

Chaitra is a dynamic leader who sits on multiple boards, runs a film fund in influence story narratives, and leads a 120K-strong Women in Cloud ecosystem across 27 countries.

LinkedIn: @chaitrav

Renard Jenkins is the President and CEO of I2A2 Technologies, Studios & Labs, a software development and consulting firm specializing in the creation of ethically responsible tools, solutions, and experiences for the M&E, Marketing & Research, Education, and Healthcare industries.

Jenkins is an experienced executive in the Technology, Film, Television, and Radio industries.

Jenkins sits on a number of corporate boards and also currently serves as Vice President of the Hollywood Professionals Association, Immediate Past President of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, and sits on the board of Exceptional Minds.

He is also an active member of the Television Academy and The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. He has held Executive roles across the Technology, Media, and Entertainment industry. Jenkins previously held Senior Executive roles at Warner Bros., PBS, TV One, Discovery, ESPN, NBA Ent., MLB, NFL, and Turner Broadcasting. Jenkins is a recipient of numerous awards, including two national Emmys, a Peabody, two Headliners, and a 2020 Broadcasting and Cable Technology Leadership award.

In 2017, Jenkins was recognized as an Innovator of the Year award recipient.

Additionally, he holds certifications as a sound engineer, AI/ML engineer, and application designer, among others. Jenkins holds a deep passion for the visual arts and, when time permits, offers pro bono services in location sound recording, live mixing, studio recording, post-production, and finishing for aspiring filmmakers, animators, and musicians.

His family’s guiding principle is “In all things, integrity, and integrity in all things.”

LinkedIn: @renardjenkins

Adrienne Lahens is a recognized leader in the creator economy and generative AI landscape. During her nearly four years at TikTok, she led high-impact initiatives at the intersection of creators, brands, and AI. She built and scaled the TikTok Creator Marketplace (now TikTok One) from inception, developing it into a global platform that empowers over 2M creators and revolutionizes brand/creator collaborations across 24 markets. Shen then pioneered generative AI innovations, launching TikTok Symphony, pushing the boundaries of creativity at scale from ideation, to production, and optimization. Given the importance of responsible AI, Adrienne founded the TikTok Symphony Collective, an AI advisory board with industry leaders from major brands and agencies as well as top creators.

Throughout her career, Adrienne has been at the forefront of digital transformation, architecting solutions that advance branded content and creator collaborations across emergent formats and platforms. As Chief Operating Officer at Influential, she drove 10x growth and established partnerships with over 60% of Fortune 500 brands by proving the efficacy of creator marketing. At BuzzFeed, she played a pivotal role in developing their early native advertising model and branded video strategy.

Adrienne's expertise has positioned her as a sought speaker at major industry events, including Cannes Lions, SXSW, and CES, where she shares her insights on the evolving digital landscape. She has been recognized as AdAge Leading Women and Variety’s Digital Innovators, and featured in leading publications and research reports spanning TechCrunch, Digiday, eMarketer, and Forrester.

Adrienne's mission centers on democratizing creativity and empowering brands and creators with cutting-edge solutions. She brings deep expertise in scaling creative technologies, building creator ecosystems, and navigating the rapidly evolving AI landscape. Currently, she publishes "The Imagination Age," a newsletter exploring the intersection of creativity, technology, and human potential, while advising select companies, and producing cutting-edge content at the frontier of generative AI. 

A New York native, Adrienne lives in Los Angeles with her husband Olivier and their two sons.

LinkedIn: @adriennelahens

James Miles worked as an educator in the New York City public schools for almost 20 years prior to moving to Seattle in 2017.

Originally from Chicago, Miles has worked internationally as an artist and educator, and his work has been featured in magazines, books, podcasts, and newspapers.

Miles is an assistant professor at Seattle University, Chief Strategy Officer at Path with Art, and on the advisory board of SXSW EDU.

His work has been featured in media including Complex magazine, the Seattle Times, the New York Times, NPR, Billboard Magazine, CBS, NBC, the US Department of Education, ASCD, and more.

His acclaimed TEDx talk focuses on his mission to narrow achievement gaps using the arts as a tool to navigate systems of educational inequality.

He is the author of Gotta Stay Fresh and you can learn more about James at FreshProfessor.com.

LinkedIn: @freshprofessor

Jiajian Min is a new media artist, architect, and creative entrepreneur. He is the Committee Chair of 2025 MIT AI Filmmaking Hackathon, co-founder of HarvardXR Inaugural Conference, Yale Alumni Mentor, the XR Track Member at NEW INC New Museum of Contemporary Art, Judge and Reviewer of MIT Reality Hack, ISEA International, IEEE AIART Workshop, selected as 2023 Forbes China 100 Most Influential Chinese. 

He is also the Cofounder and Executive Director of MYStudio, an experimental design group in Boston, integrating humanity, art, performance and technology. He has worked as Fellow and Project Lead at Harvard FAS CAMLab and collaborative researcher with MIT Design Heritage. He has lectured worldwide at Harvard University, Yale University, Brown University, RISD, NYU, Historic New England Summit, NEW INC DEMO, Tsinghua University, China Academy of Art, etc.

Jiajian’s research and works focuses on cutting-edge multimedia art creation, contemporary interpretation of cultural heritage, embodied exhibition and cognitive performance in extended reality. His interdisciplinary research has been published worldwide including ACM Siggraph Asia, IEEE AIART Workshop, IRCAM. His multimedia artworks have been showcased at Venice Biennale, Ars Electronica Art Gallery, Chengdu Biennale, Chinagraph, Asia Digital Art Exhibition, Beijing Media Art Biennale, Arte Laguna Prize, Lumen Prize, Hermes Creative Awards, etc. 

Linkedin: @jiajianmin

Debra Aho Williamson is a dynamic analyst, speaker and market influencer, recognized for her visionary contributions to the digital marketing landscape.

Debra's superpower is her ability to spot changes in consumer behavior that lead to tectonic shifts in marketing.

She was one of the first analysts in the world to pinpoint the social media trend, publishing her first research on the topic in 2006 while she was an analyst at EMARKETER.

Debra brings the same forward-looking, consumer-focused lens to her research and advisory about AI + marketing.

Debra’s opinions and analysis have been featured in thousands of news articles, and she has made more than 45 TV appearances, including on NBC, BBC, Bloomberg Television and CNBC.

Earlier in her career, Debra held editorial roles at The Industry Standard and Ad Age.

She holds a Bachelor of Arts in English and a Bachelor of Music in Oboe Performance from Northwestern University.

LinkedIn: @ebrawilliamson

Brian Storm is the founder of MediaStorm, a film production and interactive design studio that publishes diverse narratives, offers advanced storytelling training, builds publishing tools and collaborates with a diverse group of clients.

MediaStorm’s stories and interactive applications have received numerous honors, including 17 Emmy Award nominations (4 time winner), 30 Webby nominations (6 time winner), three Online Journalism Awards, three World Press Photo Awards, two Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Awards, two Overseas Press Club Awards, an Edward R. Murrow Award, as well as more than 50 awards from Pictures of the Year and Best of Photojournalism. 

Prior to launching MediaStorm in 2005, Storm spent two years as Vice President of News, Multimedia & Assignment Services for Corbis, a digital media agency founded and owned by Bill Gates. Storm led Corbis' global strategy for its news, sports, entertainment and historical collections and oversaw the division responsible for representing a group of industry-leading photographers with a focus on creating in-depth multimedia products.

From 1995 to 2002, Storm was the first Director of Multimedia at MSNBC.com, a joint venture between Microsoft and NBC News, where he was responsible for the audio, photography and video areas of one of the world’s leading 24-hour news sites. In October of 1998, his team created MSNBC's The Week in Pictures feature to showcase the power of visual journalism.

Storm received his master's degree in photojournalism in 1995 from the University of Missouri School of Journalism where he ran the New Media Lab and taught Electronic Photojournalism. In 1994, he launched the first version of MediaStorm as an interactive CD-ROM production company.

Storm serves on the Advisory Board of Reporters Without Borders, the Alexia Foundation for World Peace, the Stan Kalish Picture Editing Workshop, and Pictures of the Year. He is a frequent speaker on the subject of storytelling.

In addition to MediaStorm’s training efforts, Storm leads the product vision for the MediaStorm Platform with the goal of empowering the next generation of storytellers.

LinkedIn: @brianstorm

Colin Christianson is the Founder & CEO of Tenacious Ventures, a cutting edge, Seattle-based production company pioneering the intersection of live interactive production, AI and film making.

Known for producing one of the world’s first live interactive shows from the moon during NASA’s Artemis 1 Callisto mission, Colin continues to redefine what’s possible in digital storytelling.

From travelling the globe to produce live interactive shows to his studio in Seattle Washington, Colin is on the forefront of digital technology storytelling.

His Studio’s mission control room is inspired by NASA and Space X’s mission control rooms, which serve as a creative lab where cutting-edge tools like real-time augmented reality with Unreal Engine, AI-assisted workflows, and advanced interactive broadcast systems are used to craft meaningful, high-impact content for global audiences.

With clients like Avalara, NASA, Amazon, Microsoft, Colin is trusted to deliver powerful productions that connect, inspire, and scale. As AI transforms media, Colin explores how intelligent systems can boost creativity, streamline production, and elevate audience engagement. 

Colin holds a Business Administration degree from the University of Washington and a Psychology degree with a minor in Anthropology from Western Washington University. His focus was exploring the impact mass media had on personality development as well as sharpening his business skills. 

As a pro-conscious creator, he’s passionate about using technology to produce content that uplifts, inspires, and contributes to the evolution of humanity. As an advisor with the Seattle AI Film Festival, he’s excited to connect with fellow innovators shaping the future of impactful storytelling at the intersection of human imagination and artificial intelligence.

LinkedIn: @colinchristianson

Justin Freet is a filmmaker and festival organizer based in Seattle, Wa.

In 2005 he co-founded the RAWSTOCK Film Fest, a bimonthly film and fringe theater event spotlighting independent cinema and live performances from local musicians.

In 2019 RAWSTOCK spawned BFF (BLUNT FILM FEST), Seattle's only cannabis-themed film festival.

Freet has directed over 20 short films, and was show-runner for Every Day is a Journey, an experimental film series in which six independent filmmakers were tasked with creating a narrative daisy chain with no predetermined arc.

He is currently in post production on a dark comedy pilot, "THE LEGEND OF BUDDY NUGGS." 

Website: RAWSTOCK Studios

The Seattle AI Film Festival is produced by Culture & Code, a podcast and AI automation company helping storytellers collaborate better with AI and each other.

Visit Culture & Code

• John Gauntt, Creative Director: 206-618-8131
• Keith Anker, Event Producer/Technical Director: 206-354-5081
• Adrienne Lahens, Advisor: 631-252-5888

info@seattleaifilmfestival.com