De La Pena, Nonny

Nonny de la Peña is the program director of ASU’s Narrative and Emerging Media program, where she leads a best-in-class research and graduate program with a focus on new narratives developed using emerging media technologies in the areas of arts, culture and nonfiction. She comes to the new Los Angeles-based center -- a joint undertaking by The Sidney Poitier New American Film School, in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, and the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication -- with more than 20 years of experience as an award-winning writer, director and producer in virtual, augmented and extended reality, film, print and television.

De la Peña has been on the cover of the Wall Street Journal magazine as a WSJ “Technology Innovator of the Year” and has been called “The Godmother of Virtual Reality” by Engadget, The Guardian and others. Fast Company named her “One of the People Who Made the World More Creative” for her pioneering work in immersive journalism, a field she is widely credited with establishing. She is one of CNET en Español’s 20 most influential Latinos in tech, and a Wired Magazine #MakeTechHuman Agent of Change. A former correspondent for Newsweek, she has more than 20 years of award-winning experience in print, film and TV. Her virtual-reality work has been featured by the BBC, Mashable, Vice and Wired.

As founder and CEO of Emblematic Group, de la Peña uses cutting-edge technologies to tell stories — both fictional and news-based — that create intense, empathic engagement on the part of viewers via immersive virtual, mixed and augmented reality. Her latest breakthrough is Emblematic's WebVR platform REACH.Love, a no-code toolset that creates scalable distribution in the medium, democratizes content authorship and empowers new voices to share their stories.