Andrea Chlebak is a supervising colourist, who has worked in the film industry for 15 years. Andrea got her start as a stills photographer, then editor and compositor before seizing the opportunity to become a colourist in 2006. Since then, she has set her sights on a rapidly growing collection of feature, series and commercial projects, including Hollywood heavy hitters like Elysium, Chappie and The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, animated features like Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet and award-winning independent features, including Mandy and Prospect.

Clara Chan is a visual effects supervisor at Sony Pictures Imageworks with over two decades of industry experience. In 2001, Chan joined Imageworks as a technical director in the lighting department. Her credits include the animated feature Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, the Academy Award®-nominated Over the Moon, first three Hotel Transylvania films, Storks, The Emoji Movie, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Oz the Great and Powerful, The Amazing Spider-Man, Cats & Dogs 2, G-Force, Beowulf, the Academy Award-nominated Monster House, The Polar Express, and Stuart Little 2.

Earlier in her career, Clara worked as a software engineer at NASA Jet Propulsion Lab. Clara earned a B.S. in computer science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a master’s degree in visualization sciences from Texas A&M University.

Clara is also directing and producing an animated short film in her spare time, funded by the Canada Council for the Arts.

Colin Beadle is the HR Manager at Atomic Cartoons Inc. In 1999 he started as a CG Animator and eventually moved into Television/Game Production. His love of animation and games has given him the opportunity to work at studios such as, Disney Interactive, Titmouse Inc, and Lucasfilm Animation.

Danielle Costa is the VP of Visual Effects at Marvel Studios, and has been with Marvel Studios since 2009 working on 12 of their films. She has over 15 years experience in visual effects, production and post-production. Besides spending long hours on set and in visual effects reviews, Danielle has spearheaded the creation of multiple studio-side pipelines for streamlining visual effects, stereo, post-production and the digital intermediate process at Marvel. She is also involved in new technologies, including virtual reality.

Joe Masi has been Manager of Corporate Income Tax & Integrated Operations for the BC Ministry of Finance’s Income Taxation Branch since 2012. He oversees a portfolio of provincial tax credits that includes media and innovation tax credits such as the Film & Television Tax Credit (FTTC), Production Services Tax Credit (PSTC), and Interactive Digital Media Tax Credit (IDMTC).

Prior to the Ministry of Finance, Joe held management roles with accounting firms in public practice and focused on Scientific Research and Experimental Development tax credit claims for clients. He is a Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA, CA) and holds a Bachelor of Commerce (Honours) degree from the University of Manitoba’s Asper School of Business.

Kate has been working in VFX/animation for 15 years. After obtaining a BSc in Computer Science/Maths from the University of York, she spent a year as a junior systems administrator at MPC before returning to academia to study for an MSc in Vision, Imaging and Virtual Environments (VIVE) at UCL, which helped her transition to development roles at MPC, Framestore, Pixar and even (briefly) Electronic Arts. She is currently a senior developer at Framestore, working on a variety of applications; her projects there to date have included simulation of both rigid and deformable objects, as well as crowd editing, grooming and layout tools.

Lorraine Rozon has been recruiting for the Vancouver visual effects industry since 2010. With her background in visual effects coordination and producing, she is well versed with production’s needs and timelines. As Recruitment Manager at Industrial Light & Magic, Lorraine is responsible for hiring Artist to Supervisor roles for the Vancouver studio. She has recruited for such recent projects as Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Solo: A Star Wars Story and Black Panther.

Mark Wiebe is a Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA, CGA) and has been employed with the BC Ministry of Finance Income Taxation Branch since 2006. He is the lead auditor and team lead for the BC Interactive Digital Media Tax Credit and also has experience in the administration of many BC tax credits including the BC Scientific Experimental Development tax credit.

Natali is a VP, Head of Development at EA SPORTS Vancouver, overseeing the development of the EA SPORTS FIFA, EA SPORTS NHL & EA SPORTS UFC franchises — a cumulative organization of 600 people. She has been with EA for 15 years after graduating with a BSc, Computer Science from UBC. Natali’s primary responsibility as a member of the EA SPORTS leadership team is to drive the business across two key studios: Vancouver, Canada and Bucharest, Romania. This includes managing her organization’s budget and staff planning, long-term development plans, strategic planning, new product kick-offs, development model improvements, day-to-day tactical execution, project auditing and risk reduction strategies.

Paul Griggs works with associations, agencies and businesses in the cultural non-profit sector with strategic planning, stakeholder engagement, and sponsorship development. Previously, Paul has worked in the private sector in the exhibitions and conference industry with long term strategic planning, executive leadership and partnership development. He has served as the Vice President for Informa Canada, the world’s largest producer of exhibitions and conferences and the CEO and Founder of Events on the Move, a logistics supplier to the meeting industry. Contact [email protected]

Rachel Rose joined Industrial Light & Magic in 2007 as a Research & Development Engineer. In 2016, she was promoted to R&D Supervisor for Animation, Virtual Production, Digital Modeling and Creature Development and Simulation. In this role Rachel is responsible for driving both long-term and short-term technology that aids artists in the creation and animation of characters for feature films.

During her time at ILM, Rachel has worked on a wide variety of tools including: BlockParty 2, a visual, procedural rigging system for which she was awarded a Technical Achievement Award by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2018; VSet, a comprehensive virtual production tool package; Fez, ILM’s facial animation system; and Mobius, a tool for translating character setups and animation from Maya to ILM’s in-house proprietary software called Zeno. These tools have been used in many well-known films, including Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015), Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014), Noah (2014), Battleship (2012), The Avengers (2012), Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2011), Rango (2011) and Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008).

Prior to joining Industrial Light & Magic, Rachel received a Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science and English from Grinnell College. Rachel continued her education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she received a Masters degree and Ph.D. in Computer Science. While in graduate school, Rachel spent two of her summers working for Rockstar Games. She currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, Justin, and her two young children.

After working for several years in a Vancouver chartered accounting firm, Robert first joined Creative BC when it was BC Film + Media. At that time, he became part of the organization's newly forming tax credit team.

Now Creative BC's Vice President, Robert markets British Columbia internationally as a destination of choice for projects and companies seeking a world class creative industries centre in which to do business. In his role, he leads the administration of Creative BC's tax credit and granting programs, balancing attraction of international business with support for BC's domestic content creators.

During his tenure with the organization, Robert has become the expert on motion picture tax credits, originally helping to launch the BC film and television tax credit program in 1998. He went on to play an integral role in the evolution of British Columbia’s motion picture industry tax policy.

Sarah Matthews is an Effects Technical Director at Weta Digital. Her contributions to a film range from atmospheric particulates to environment motion, water and volumetric simulations, and large-scale destruction.

Sarah graduated from the Auckland University of Technology in 2009 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Communication Studies majoring in Digital Media. She went on to Huhu Studios where she led the rigging department, and developed and maintained the show pipeline.

Sarah joined Weta Digital in 2014 for the completion of Rise of the Planet of the Apes and The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. Since then, she has contributed large-scale waterfalls for Avatar: Flight of Passage, destruction and animation-driven effects for Maze Runner: The Death Cure, foliage motion in War for the Planet of the Apes, ghost simulations for Spectral, and has tried her hand at lighting shots for Alvin & the Chipmunks: The Road Chip. She is currently working on Alita: Battle Angel.

Trina has been a graphics geek since the early days of flying logos. An obsession with early music videos inspired her to leave her hometown of Seattle and head to Chicago to study VR and Scientific Visualization, dropping her into a wonderful world of gravitational waves and Big Bang theories. The physics experience helped her land a job writing physics-based simulation code for a little movie about a big green ogre named Shrek. Since then she’s worked in three countries on eleven different movies including Harry Potter, The Dark Knight and Inception. Now she’s back in the world of animation working as a Senior Engineer on Pixar’s RenderMan software team. A long-time member of ACM SIGGRAPH and the Visual Effects Society she has recently become a Surrogate Committee Member for the Scientific and Technical Academy Awards. She started attending SIGGRAPH as a student volunteer in 1992, and is now reaching out to the younger generation encouraging young women and girls to get involved in STEM careers. She mentors students through Skype in the Classroom and has served on several panels discussing STEM and technology careers, including the SIGGRAPH Women of Pixar panel.

Originally from London, Victoria began her career as an Actor’s Agent, helping build careers for actors straight out of drama school, as well as finding casting opportunities for established TV and West End actors. Victoria then went on to specialist media recruitment, sourcing talent for leading UK TV and Film Production companies.

Victoria joined the DNEG London recruitment team in January 2013, and 2 years later, transferred to DNEG Vancouver as Senior Recruiter. In 2017, she was promoted to Talent Acquisition Manager where she leads a successful team of recruiters and assistants, ensuring DNEG continues to bring in the very best talent in the industry. During her 5.5 years at DNEG, Victoria has hired crew and support staff for over 40 movies including award-winning shows such as Interstellar, Ex Machina and Blade Runner 2049.

As Head of CG Canada, Zoe engages in shows from their very initial discussions until their final delivery, and beyond! Zoe is excited to adopt new technologies and resources, giving artists a new and exciting means to create VFX of the highest level.

Whilst being an active member of the VFX and Animation Community, Zoe is passionate about building and growing talented and diverse teams, whereby people can work at their very best in a thriving and enriching environment.

Zoe started her career in 2005 at Double Negative London, subsequently working in the Singapore and Vancouver studios. Her most recent roles were CG Supervisor, Head of Build and Head of CG.