Featured Speaker(s)

Rosario Ballesteros Casas is co-founder of VR Americas LLC, an AR, VR & XR company expanding the frontier of immersive technologies in commercial applications. She is also the Founder and President of Business Creative Partners, an advisory firm specializing in investment in Latin America with special interest in the areas of technology, innovation and digital businesses. She is an entrepreneurial mentor at the Tandon School of Engineering at NYU, a speaker at the NAB Show, AWE, and Steaminista, and will be speaking at the World Summit on Innovation and Entrepreneurship. She is also co-founder of a brand new company helping companies in the solution of their main business challenges through the use of Big Data and AI techniques and tools, which will be formally launched in January 2018. Rosario is the former CEO of Grupo Senseta, Inc., and also had a leadership role at the opening of Julius Bar Private Bank in Colombia. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science from the Universidad de los Andes, and an MBA from the University of Mondragon in Spain.

Jeffrey Jacobson, Ph.D., has worked in Virtual Reality and Mixed Reality for more than 25 years, mastering each new wave of the technology as they have emerged. His doctorate in Information Science is centered on how humans learn information rich architecture in VR. His published research on VR software and learning in immersive spaces is widely cited in the literature for educational technology. His later work (NSF and NEH funded) is highly regarded among scholars of cultural history and heritage. In the last few years, Dr. Jacobson offered consulting, training, and project management in virtual and augmented reality in the Real Estate and Construction sectors. He has had a significant impact on the architectural design community, helping the early adopters take advantage of newly available immersive technologies. Dr. Jacobson is also a founding member and longtime co-leader of BostonVR, the fifth largest VR meetup in the world. The organization has had a profound impact on the adoption of immersive technologies in the Boston area.

Parna Sarkar-Basu is the founder of Brand and Buzz Marketing. She has a track record of putting start-ups on the map, elevating growing companies to industry leaders and creating new market categories. Parna has led marketing and global communications functions at various technology companies, including Kaminario, iRobot, iCorps Technologies, Invention Machine (acquired by IHS) and PTC. She has also been instrumental in creating and executing successful initial public offering (IPO) and mergers and acquisitions (M&A) communications strategies. Parna is a STEM ambassador and an advocate of women in technology. She is the Boston Network Executive Advisor for Women in Technology International (WITI) and co-founder of South Shore Science Festival.