Apprenticeship Speaker Series — The BRIC Foundation
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The BRIC Foundation
Twice monthly, hear from internationally acclaimed industry professionals speak about their work and different career pathways in animation, VFX, and gaming. This Speaker Series will be streamed live on the second and last Tuesdays of every month*. (*Note: dates may vary to accommodate school schedules.)

Teachers who register will receive information about each speaker and lesson material to share with their classes prior to the events. Students will also have the opportunity to interact with the speakers through a facilitated Q&A session.

Thanks for tuning in! The live speaker series will resume in the fall with new career topics and industry speakers.

Until then, you can rewatch all the past sessions below.

Chelsea Itaya is currently a Creative Executive at Sony Pictures Animation in Sony Pictures Animation’s series development department. Chelsea received her Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business but quickly realized that she wanted to get into a creative field and veered off of the typical business tracks. After interning twice at DreamWorks Animation during school, she fell in love with the animation process and set her mind on breaking into the industry.

She worked at Warner Bros. Entertainment and Paramount Animation before moving to Montreal to work as a script/story coordinator and eventually a feature development coordinator at ON Animation. Chelsea is passionate about helping underrepresented groups get those coveted Director/Writer/Producer positions and has worked with organizations like Women in Animation, BRIC, Native American Animation Lab, Good City Mentors and Rise Up Animation in an effort to make that happen.

Jeremy Stewart has been a professional VFX animator for the last 24 years working primarily in the film industry. His work has won numerous awards with a long list of high profile film credits, including Sonic the Hedgehog II, Marvel's Ant-Man and the Wasp, Pacific Rim II, Jurassic World, Game of Thrones, Star Trek: Beyond, The Thing, X-Men, Charlotte's Web, Happy Feet, and many more.

As well as co-founding a VFX studio, Jeremy has held senior and supervising roles at premier studios, including DNEG and Image Engine. Throughout his career, Jeremy has worked on a diverse range of projects that vary in scope, scale, and style. He has gone well beyond the role of animator to edit, produce, and create numerous film and media productions.

As the Senior Creative Director for VALORANT, Christina Wun is responsible for overseeing the style and quality of the game’s creative expressions across art, audio, and narrative, working to ensure these creative expressions deepen a player’s emotional connection to the game.

Prior to her time on VALORANT, Christina worked as both the senior art director and product lead on Wild Rift, and also scaled Riot Games’ art department by building its operational capabilities globally. It was during her time as Art Operations Director at Riot that she successfully deepened the leadership bench for both the art and engineering departments through the facilitation of her custom built leader development program.

Christina began her 15+ year career in video games as a visual effects artist, developing both AAA console titles and her penchant for communicating gameplay with satisfying and unique visual experiences. Outside of her daily work life, Christina has served on the board of advisors for the Game Developers Conference and on the board of directors for Mental Health America of Los Angeles.

After graduating from the Gnomon School of VFX, Devon Fay started his career in Blizzard Entertainment’s film department. He began working on matte-painted environments for projects such as Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty and World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. Devon continued his work at Blizzard as a Matte Painting Lead for Diablo III, World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria and Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm.

While constantly seeking new challenges and techniques, he decided to transfer his career to real-time environments for games. Devon moved to work on the Call of Duty series at Infinity Ward as a Senior Environment Artist. He has continued his environment work as a Lead Artist at Riot Games on the recently shipped VALORANT. Currency Devon is an Art Director in the RnD department at Riot Games.

Tom Smith has been making games for over 25 years. After a brief stint in board games, he has worked on console games, handheld games, PC games, mobile games, educational games, assessment games, and just about anything else you can think of. He helped with Where’s My Water? at Disney and Conan at THQ and match-3 games at Zynga. He currently works at Roblox, encouraging the growth of educational games on that platform. He also teaches a class on games at Moorpark College. Tom prefers blueberry pie to apple pie, but enjoys both.

Dylan Ekren is a Character Modeler working for over 10 years in feature animation for studios like Disney, Paramount and Netflix. He has always loved to make characters, whether drawing or sculpting them. Dylan enjoys learning and talking about the craft; and making a mess, then fixing it. One time, he saw a ghost and he wasn’t even scared.

The Animation Guild, IATSE Local 839 is the labor union that represents artists, writers, technicians, and production workers in the animation industry. The union IS the members, and they stand together to help set standards for wages and working conditions so that they can build and sustain successful careers in a creative field. The panelists represent different crafts in the industry, and will talk about their personal animation journeys, from how they got their starts to where they are now.

Paula Spence is an Art Director and Designer in the TV animation industry, most recently at Nickelodeon Animation Studio (a SpongeBob Universe movie for Netflix), ShadowMachine (Little Demon) and Cartoon Network Studios (Shorts, Close Enough, Regular Show, The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack). She enjoys building teams of talented artists, making meaningful connections and gorgeous artwork with them, and organizing the hell out of her projects. She serves on the Executive Board and as Recording Secretary at The Animation Guild, IATSE Local 839, as a TAG Foundation Director, and strives to engage her fellow members and inspire them to volunteer for the greater good of the union’s membership, future members, and the industry as a whole.

Kris Mukai is a scriptwriter and illustrator working in Southern California. She has drawn for The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Peachtree Publishing. She writes for tv animation and her credits include work for Adventure Time, Craig of the Creek, and We Baby Bears. Along with writing and illustrating she also self publishes various comics. Her work can be found at hikrismukai.com.

Amanda Li is an Asian American art director and visual development artist based in LA with over a decade of creative expertise in 2D and CG animation. She has a passion and enthusiasm for visual storytelling and developing shows in the children animation space. She has worked with a number of studios including Netflix Animation, Disney Television Animation, Cartoon Network Studios and DreamWorks Animation. She was most recently art director for the Nickelodeon Development Shorts Program and is currently lead visual development artist on Monster High. Prior to her transition to animation, she received her Bachelor of Architecture degree from the Pennsylvania State University and worked several years as an architect.

Kris Wimberly is Co-Founder and Head of Creative for Studio Smokescreen, an independent, Black-owned animation studio dedicated to leading significant changes in diversity and inclusion across the animation industry. Kris is a classically trained director and storyboard artist who currently serves as director on Disney’s newest hit animated series, “Firebuds.” He also has a new project in development at Disney about a time-traveling treasure hunter. Kris’ additional credits include HBO Max's “Close Enough,” Disney’s “Elena of Avalor,” Universal's “Curious George 4: Royal Monkey,” Nickelodeon's “Spongebob SquarePants” and Cartoon Network's “Teen Titans Go!” He specializes in comedy and action-comedy, and has worked on animated productions of nearly every type - from 2D, CG and Flash Animation to script-driven and storyboard-driven, and across preschool, kids and primetime television series, as well as feature films.

Dean Wellins is an award-winning animation director. With more than 27 years of experience, Dean has held many roles as animator, story artist, writer, and director across a number of esteemed animation studios and beloved films. His credits include Warner Bros Feature Animation's The Iron Giant and Osmosis Jones, Walt Disney Animation Studios' Treasure Planet, Chicken Little, Bolt, Tangled, Princess and the Frog, Frozen, Big Hero 6, Zootopia, Moana, and Raya and the Last Dragon, and Disney+'s Baymax! series. Currently Dean is directing an unnamed feature project at Paper Games.

Miguel Gonzalez is an Art Director on Nickelodeon’s The Casagrandes, where he uses his keen eye for marrying whimsical details with the timeless beauty of Mexican culture. With a robust list of art and leadership credits to his name across multiple top-billed animation studios, his specialties lie in prop design, background art, and visual development. Some of his best-known visual development roles include working in environment design on the Jorge Gutierrez feature film The Book of Life, and his numerous roles in background design include Cartoon Network’s Uncle Grandpa and Nickelodeon’s Pig Goat Banana Cricket, Rocko’s Modern Life: Static Cling, and Glitch Techs. In the realm of prop design, Miguel has lent his talents to The Loud House and Pig Goat Banana Cricket, as well as Warner Brothers’ Unikitty! animated series.

Naomi Goldman is a nationally recognized expert in public relations and communications, and is the Principal of Los Angeles-based agency NLG Communications. She has directed award-winning campaigns for film and TV studios/production companies, above- and below-the-line talent, festivals, Fortune 100 companies, government agencies and nonprofits. Goldman has led worldwide communications and special projects for the past decade for the Visual Effects Society, including media relations, social media, messaging, brand/reputation management, counsel on industry issues, programming around diversity, equity and inclusion and other initiatives.

Kaitlyn Yang is the CEO and visual effects supervisor of Alpha Studios, and a disability advocate and a co-founder of 1IN4 Coalition. Her credits include American Born Chinese, Raised by Wolves, and Grey’s Anatomy.

She is a recipient of the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for Hollywood, and USC’s Young Alumni Merit Award. She holds a BA from the USC Film school, an MBA from the Quantic School of Business and Technology, and leadership and psychology certificates from Harvard Business School.

Rebecca Forth is a Look Development Lighting Technical Director at Industrial Light & Magic in San Francisco. She began at ILM 11 years ago as a Resource Assistant before working her way up to the role of a Lighting Artist. She has contributed to many films and tv shows including The Lord of the Rings, The Book of Boba Fest, The Mandalorian, and more.