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Joanna Fang MPSE is an Emmy award winning Foley artist and sound editor. An alumna of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Joanna developed a passion for Foley while studying Film and TV production. Graduating with several made for TV horror films under her belt, Joanna started an apprenticeship with lead Foley artist Leslie Bloome at New York’s Alchemy Post Sound and worked there for 7 years. In 2021, she joined Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Creative Arts Studios Sound Team as their senior Foley artist co-leading the development of their interactive Foley studio with senior Foley mixer Blake Collins.

Throughout her career, Joanna has cultivated a body of work spanning triple A video games, independent cinema, documentary film, installation art, television, and radio. She focuses on supporting unique storytellers through novel and empathy driven applications of performed sound. She has crashed a bus for This American Life’s Ira Glass, sprinted in heels for Celine Song’s The Materialists, and climbed mountains for Kojima Production’s Death Stranding 2. Her Foley is playable on several PlayStation titles including Helldivers 2, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, God of War Ragnarök, and Ghost of Yōtei.

In 2016, the Television Academy recognized Joanna as the first openly transgender woman of color to win a Primetime Emmy for her Foley work on A&E’s Cartel Land.

This talk targets studio leaders, producers, art/technical directors, pipeline engineers and developers who want to integrate AI into active production. It assumes familiarity with modern game development pipelines but requires no machine‑learning expertise, focusing instead on practical workflows, cross‑disciplinary collaboration and management considerations. Sergei Gourski is a Creative Technology Leader and game developer with over 24 years of experience shipping games across PC, console, and mobile platforms. He ran a studio as Head of Development and Lead Animator at Subatomic Studios, where he led the Fieldrunners franchise, including the original Fieldrunners, one of the top-grossing iOS games of 2009, and Fieldrunners for iPad, a launch title featured in Apple's 2010 iPad keynote. At Subatomic, he also served as Creative Director on Autodesk's highly downloaded TinkerBox. Throughout his career, Sergei has built and scaled multidisciplinary teams with a developer-first mindset focused on tools, UX, workflows, and real-world production constraints. Now at Keywords Studios (AI Solutions), he designs and deploys production-ready AI pipelines spanning diffusion models, ComfyUI, generative 2D/3D/video, and NeRFs, delivering high-fidelity assets and personalized video at scale. His earlier credits include Spider-Man 2, Empire Earth, Star Trek Fleet Command, and Aliens: Colonial Marines, reflecting a career grounded equally in hands-on craft, leadership, and shipping real products.

Mason Lieberman is an award-winning composer, audio director, and producer known for his contributions to the gaming and anime zeitgeist. He prides himself on being a problem-solver whose biggest passion is always to connect people through music. Beginning his professional journey as a freelance composer, he got his start composing on anime series like Rooster Teeth's RWBY and Beyblade Burst Evolution, amongst many others. His music has enhanced the heroics of franchises like Spider-Man, Mobile Suit Gundam, Ultraman, and Neon Genesis Evangelion, while lending epic gravitas to titles like Overwatch 2, League of Legends: Wild Rift, PUBG Mobile, Apex Legends Mobile, Teamfight Tactics, EVO, DC Metal Force, Omega Strikers, Unico, Eden, Game for Peace, Mobile Legends Bang Bang, Devil Engine, Soundfall, Bread & Fred, and many others. As a cellist, guitarist, and vocalist, Mason has had the great pleasure of working with a wide variety of film and gaming franchises, with personal favorites including Pokémon, Death Stranding 2, Kaiju #8, Stars Wars: Visions, The Rising of the Shield Hero, Nintendo's Super Smash Bros. franchise, Riot Games' League of Legends, Guild Wars 2, AMC's The Walking Dead, Made in Abyss, Arknights, Tower of God, Warhammer: Vermintide, the Grammy-nominated Stray Gods, Sega's Sin Chronicle, Hell's Kitchen, and God Eater. As a public speaker, Mason Lieberman has addressed passionate audiences on subjects related to film scoring, anime music production, video game scoring, and music theory. He has lectured academically at acclaimed academic programs like Harvard University, UCLA, Musicians Institute and Berklee College of Music, industry-leading conferences like NAMM, SXSW, GDC, and GameSoundCon, and many others. He is a member of faculty at the University of Southern California, where he lectures on video game audio for the School of Cinematic Arts' Interactive Media and Games department. He is also a member of faculty at Berklee College of Music, where he teaches in the Screen Scoring program on subjects surrounding video game scoring, film scoring, and the business of being a composer in the modern media landscape. In 2019, he partnered with Asia Pacific government officials as an international ambassador to Australia representing the video-game music industry. He was thrilled to present the official Cowboy Bebop charity single, 'The Real Folk Blues', in collaboration with Funimation, Sunrise, featuring special guest artists like Yoko Kanno and the Seatbelts, Steve Blum, and many, many more. This original arrangement hit #6 on Billboard global Digital song sales chart, as well as #1 on rock charts in Japan. In 2021, he shared the 'Best Score' award at the Crunchyroll Anime Awards with the rest of the team of 'Tower of God'. He also received the 2020 GANG award for Best Casual or Social Game Audio for his contributions to Tencent's wildly-popular 'Game for Peace' soundtrack. He was honored to be a part of the Forbes 30 under 30, Gaming category for the 2022 list. In 2023, he won the Hollywood Music in Media award for Best Game Score - Mobile for his work as a composer and music director for Game for Peace. For six years, Mason served as a senior composer and game audio supervisor for Tencent. In this position, he had the indescribable honor of working with many of the best audio professionals in the industry on a daily basis. Today, Mason is the Music and Audio Director at Interleave, one of the most highly-regarded music and audio companies in the world. He leads a team of expert audio veterans on a path that has intersected with many of the top franchises of all time. Mason endorses Kiesel Guitars, NS Design, and Auralex Acoustics.

Yuri Lowenthal is an award winning actor-writer-producer most well known for his work in video games and animation, from PRINCE OF PERSIA to MARVEL'S SPIDER-MAN. He wrote VOICE-OVER VOICE ACTOR with his wife, fellow actor Tara Platt and it is used as a textbook in many U.S. university acting programs.

Sam Maggs is a New York Times Bestselling and Eisner-nominated author of books, comics, and video games. Her novels include Star Wars Jedi: Battle Scars and The Unstoppable Wasp: Built on Hope; she’s written for games like Call of Duty: Vanguard, Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, and Marvel’s Spider-Man; and her comics and graphic novels include Marvel Action: Captain Marvel, Critical Role: The Mighty Nein Origins, and Tell No Tales: Pirates of the Southern Seas. She is also on-air talent for networks like Dropout and the Nerdist. A Canadian in Los Angeles, she misses Coffee Crisp and bagged milk.

Kathleen McGovern is a Narrative Animator at Santa Monica Studio with over 7 years of professional animation experience. Kathleen began her animation studies at the University of Central Florida in Orlando and continued her education at Animation Mentor. Throughout her career, she has contributed to the development of seven AAA titles, including  releases such as God of War: Ragnarök, Spider-Man 2, Death Stranding 2, and Avowed. She loves all things art and expression. In addition to her love for animation, she has a passion for dancing, fire spinning, and being an aerialist in her spare time. Kathleen strives to learn something new every day and experience all that she can. Life is about movement; both portraying it and living it. Most importantly, it should be fun!

Patrick Michalak is the Dialogue Manager at Insomniac Games, where he oversees voice-over production, casting, performance capture, and implementation for some of the industry's most ambitious AAA titles. In a single day, he might act as casting director, voice director, union signatory, scheduler, talent wrangler, and—on occasion—therapist. His experience at BioWare, DICE, and now Insomniac has given him a unique perspective on game dialogue production from every angle. Patrick's AAA and VR credits include Marvel's Spider-Man 2, Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, Mass Effect 2, Mass Effect 3, Mass Effect: Andromeda, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Anthem, Star Wars Battlefront, Mirror's Edge: Catalyst, Stormland, and Stranglets. He is currently working on the highly anticipated Wolverine game. Patrick began his career as a studio engineer recording and editing dialogue for radio, television, and film before moving into games at BioWare, where he recorded, edited, and mastered hundreds of thousands of lines for the Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchises. In addition to his technical expertise, Patrick has cast and directed space operas, sci-fi adventures, shooters, comic book adaptations, post-dystopian thrillers, and cartoon comedies. One project even featured over 1,000 characters—meaning a lot of auditions.

Tomo started making games in 1998 at, a then small studio, Treyarch. Spider-Man 2 (2004) was his first big taste of leadership. He co-founded Hyperkinetic Studios in 2014. He has been getting involved in a wide range of interactive work ever since.

Evan Narcisse is the Senior Writer at Brass Lion Entertainment. He's worked as a screenwriter, producer, and narrative design consultant in video games, comic books, film, and TV, often focusing on the intersection of blackness and pop culture. As a journalist and critic, he wrote for The Atlantic, Time Magazine, Kotaku, and The New York Times, in addition to teaching game journalism at New York University and appearances as an expert guest on CNN and NPR. He's also the author of the Rise of the Black Panther graphic novel, Marvel Black Panther: Wakanda Atlas, and The New Day: Power of Positivity. As a narrative design consultant, he's worked on Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Redfall, Marvel's Avengers, Gotham Knights, and the award-winning Dot's Home. He also served as story producer on the HBO Max documentary Milestone Generations, documenting the rise, fall, and rebirth of the groundbreaking black-owned comics company Milestone Media.

Ashley Ash Poprik is a video game and comic writer. Her credits include Destiny 2, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, Clue: Disney Villains, Marvel's Spider-Man 2, and Transphoria, to name a few. Ash pushes to create a more diverse games industry through mentorship, speaking, and advocacy.

Chris Pruett is the Director of Games at Meta Reality Labs. A veteran game developer, Chris has spent nearly 30 years building, shipping, and publishing games, including a decade of work in VR. Under the cover of night Chris writes about horror game design. He lives with his family and judgmental dog in Seattle, Washington. Previously, Chris co-founded Robot Invader, where he built and designed games including Wind-up Knight, Rise of the Blobs, and Dead Secret. At Google, he partnered with developers to bring standout titles to Android Market, helped launch the first Android devices in Japan, and created Replica Island, an open-source side-scrolling game for Android. Earlier in his career, he contributed to console titles including Spider-Man, SpongeBob SquarePants, Crash Bandicoot, and Finding Nemo.

Matt is the Senior Creative Director at PlayStation Studios Creative. With over 17 years of experience in branding and campaign design across a wide range of industries, he joined PlayStation in 2018. Since then, he's led branding efforts for numerous high-profile titles, including Returnal, the Horizon franchise, Helldivers 2, Until Dawn, Sackboy: A Big Adventure, Destruction AllStars, Spider-Man, and many more.