2022 AIS Summit at Skywalker Ranch Guests

Carl Rijsbrack is the Chief Marketing Officer and Head of Innovation of Cinionic, a Barco company. Since joining Cinionic in 2018, Rijsbrack has led a team of cinema marketers and technology experts to deliver the best cinema experience to theatre exhibitors around the world. Before joining Cinionic, Carl held several positions at Barco over the course of more than 15 years. There, Rijsbrack served as the Vice President of Events, where he delivered cutting-edge products for the rental and staging world to create compelling experiences using AV technologies such as projection, LED, lighting, image processing and media servers. He was also Vice President of Sales & Marketing and Product Management where he learned all facets of the cinema technology industry including how to deliver best-in-class projection to theatres. Prior to Barco, Carl was the Head of Business Management and Marketing at Alcatel-Lucent where he oversaw the applications business division and the multimedia and ventures products group. He holds a Masters in Computer Science from the University of Antwerp and currently resides in Ingelmunster, Belgium with his wife Patricia and their 2 children.
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Paul Saccone has been working in post production for over 25 years as an editorial workflow expert. Paul currently works at Adobe on their suite of professional video apps including Premiere Pro, After Effects, Audition, and Media Encoder. Prior to Adobe, Paul was Vice President of Marketing at Frame.io. He worked at BlackMagic Design from 2014 through 2019, helping turn DaVinci Resolve from a color correction tool into a complete end-to-end collaborative workflow system for editorial, color, visual effects, motion graphics, and audio post. He served as Director of Product at Apple working on Final Cut Pro from version 2 to 7. Paul is well known for his enthusiastic and fun presentations, and is a published author on the subject video editing. He’s based in San Francisco, California where he lives with his husband Ryan and dogs, Gracie and Bruno.
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Toby leads the Media & Entertainment vertical in Google Cloud's Office of the CISO, where he focuses on driving strategic change across the content and enterprise security disciplines. In his previous role at Microso and now at Google, he’s partnered with every major studio to work on cloud transformation initiatives across animation, VFX and post-production. Before getting involved at the intersection of Hollywood and cloud, he ran the services arm of a major MSP in Manhattan (where he developed their cloud consulting practice), and before that founded and sold his own consulting firm in Seattle, Washington. He now lives in Boulder, Colorado with his wife and two sons– who are officially recognized as the World’s Best Kids.
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Andrew Shulkind is the Head of Capture and Innovation for MSG Sphere Studios, where he leads a diverse team of technologists and imagemakers developing and deploying the next-generation camera, production, and audio tools required to create content for The Sphere.   Additionally, Andrew is the principal Director of Photography for Sphere content and serves on the Los Angeles-based studio leadership team, answering both the creative “what” and the technical “how.” Andrew came to Sphere as an award-winning director of photography, advanced imaging consultant, and one of the leading industry voices on the future of entertainment.  He has spent over two decades on the front lines of where technology meets entertainment, helping forge a hybrid future that merges experiential media, traditional cinema, live events, and commercial art and advertising. His work is best known for letting the creative drive the product, integrating live action cinematography with cutting edge solutions such as large format and high speed imaging, 360˚ photography, volumetric capture and data scanning. Andrew has also helped launched a range of camera and lighting products and advised a wide range of leading technology players, studios, and brands on content innovation strategy, including Google, Facebook, Verizon, Microsoft, Sony, Samsung, Live Nation, and the NBA.  He was awarded with the Emerging Cinematographer Award from the International Cinematographers Guild in 2014, the Innovator of the Year Prime Award from Studio Daily in 2014 and 2016, as well as Variety Magazine’s 10 Cinematographers to Watch in 2018.
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Aaron is the managing director in the Technology, Media and Telecommunications Group in Investment Banking, where he leads the Entertainment Investment Banking team. He joined Goldman Sachs in 2003 as an analyst and was named managing director in 2015. Aaron serves on the Board of Directors of the Arthur Miller Foundation, a nonprofit that provides access to theater education in public schools and aims to increase the number of students that receive a theater education as an integral part of their academic curriculum. Aaron earned an AB in Computer Science from Harvard University in 2003.
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William D. Simon is a Senior Client Partner at Korn Ferry Los Angeles office and Global Sector Leader in Media and Entertainment. Mr. Simon brings to the Firm an extensive background as an entertainment executive with a keen understanding of a wide variety of areas of the industry. The Media, Entertainment and Convergence sector that he oversees encompasses all aspects of traditional entertainment – film, television, home entertainment, music and publishing – and all digital content and platforms for broadband, games, wireless and mobile devices. Mr. Simon handles the full range of senior operating positions from CEO and COO through senior level creative and content positions.  Mr. Simon has served as the chairman of Korn Ferry’s shareholder’s committee and on the Firm’s worldwide board of directors. Mr. Simon is recognized in Nancy Garrison-Jenn’s survey of the top 200 global executive recruiters and ranked among the top 35 in CableFax Magazine’s most influential in cable. Before joining Korn Ferry, Mr. Simon established the entertainment division at the investment banking and brokerage firm, Communications Equity Associates. He was involved in transactions that included music, home video, theatrical exhibitions and television programming. Earlier in his career, Mr. Simon served as vice president at Heron Communications, Inc., where he was involved in the development of new business for its home video company, Media Home Entertainment, as well as general corporate management. Outside of his professional responsibilities, he is an advisory board member to the Los Angeles Kings. In addition, he serves on the Board of Councilors for the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Mr. Simon also served as the deputy staff secretary to President Jimmy Carter and he has held other government and political jobs.
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Jeremy is the Chief Technologist for incubation projects in the Advanced Compute & Solutions division at HP Inc. Prior to joining HP, he was CTO at Jellyfish Pictures. At Jellyfish, he helped grow the company from an eight man team to a facility of over 550 people across 15 countries. He oversaw several company expansions to different premises and has built a strong reputation for re-imagining the production pipeline using a hybrid of cloud based and desktop-based technologies. He has a background in IT security (Canada) and earned a Master of Science in Information Technology from the University of Liverpool (UK).
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Peter Sohn joined Pixar Animation Studios in September 2000, and has worked on Academy Award^®-winning feature films including “Finding Nemo,” “The Incredibles” and “WALL•E.” Sohn made his directorial debut on the Pixar short “Partly Cloudy,” before going on to direct his first feature “The Good Dinosaur.” He was also an Executive Producer on “Luca,” which debuted on Disney+ in June 2021. Most recently, Sohn directed Disney and Pixar’s feature film “Elemental,” which opened in theaters summer 2023 and is now streaming on Disney+. In his role as a Creative VP, Sohn is involved in key creative decision-making at the studio and consults on films in both development and production. In addition to his contributions as a filmmaker, Sohn has lent his voice talents to Pixar’s feature films.  In “Ratatouille” he voiced the character of Emile, and in “Monsters University,” he is the voice of Scott “Squishy” Squibbles. Audiences will also hear Sohn in Pixar’s feature film “Lightyear,” where he voices Buzz’s lovable robotic feline sidekick, Sox. Prior to Pixar, Sohn worked at Warner Bros. with “Ratatouille” director Brad Bird on “The Iron Giant,” as well as at Disney TV. He grew up in New York and attended California Institute of the Arts (Cal Arts).  He currently lives in the Bay Area.
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Michael is currently the CTO at Framestore, where he leads technology across feature film visual effects, advertising, immersive, location-based, and other forms of media and entertainment. Michael has worked in creative production for nearly 30 years for companies including Walt Disney Imagineering, Pixar Animation Studios, Electronic Arts, and MPC. Michael has worked throughout his career at the intersection of technology, creativity, and entertainment to bring new projects and technologies to life. Michael is a member of the Visual Effects Society, and has served as part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Scientific and Technical Awards Committee since 2014.
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Sebastian Sylwan is currently leading an R&D team at Netflix, focusing on future workflows for Animation, VFX and Virtual Production. From the beginning of his career, Sebastian excelled at the technical side of his work, yet always drew his inspiration from the boldy artistic side of the industry. As he established his technological expertise across multiple projects, countries and languages, he built bridges between the technological side of his trade and the creative minds necessary to envision its future. As CTO at Weta Digital, the Oscar™-winning visual effects studio known for Avatar, Planet of the Apes, Tin Tin, X-Men and other films Sebastian spearheaded advanced technology projects like the first spectral production raytracer, Manuka, its real-time companion Gazebo and a distributed virtual production backend pipeline. Aa CTO & Creative Partner at Felix & Paul Studios, Sebastian collaborated on the creative development of all projects and led the Technology evolution of the studio, including the design of the space cameras that filmed inside and outside the International Space Station, for Space Explorers, The ISS Experience, the largest media project ever filmed in space. As CTO of Italy's Lumiq Studios, he designed and built the country’s largest film and animation studio and in previous roles he co-designed advanced reflectance field capture device Light Stage 6 at USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies, served as director of technology for VFX company Digital Domain and led the global Film & Television Industry strategy at Autodesk. No matter his role or where he's found himself in the world, Sebastian has stayed dedicated  to serving the broader industry serving in several advisory boards and committees: he's chair of the Visual Effects Society Technology Committee, an active member of the Academy’s Sci-Tech Awards Committee, was a member of the Previs committee and co-chair of the Previs 2020 subcommittee that gave birth to the Virtual Production Committee. In his executive role empowering partnerships between industry leaders, emerging artists and tech heavyweights, he remains a champion of new frontiers and allied evolution in entertainment.
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