The staff of Brookline Interactive Group and its project, the Public VR Lab. [left to right: Corbin Riedel- BIG Assistant Director; Nir Darom, Lead Creative Director-Public VR Lab; Andrew Doig-IT/Sys Admin; Simas Phillips- Job Training & Production Coordinator; Kathy Bisbee- Executive Director/Co-founder of the Public VR Lab; Shannen Ortale- Communications & Community Journalism Coordinator; Erin Kinney- Program Manager of Engagement & Education.]
Meet BIG’s Executive Director; Co-Founder of the Public VR Lab: Kathy Bisbee
Kathy Bisbee is the executive director of Brookline Interactive Group (BIG), a community media arts center in Brookline, MA, and the co-founder/director of the Public VR Lab, where she and her team are building an empowered Community VR movement that values accessibility, digital inclusion, and diversity in the XR field.
Kathy is an award-winning, multidisciplinary storyteller, producing documentary content in the U.S and Latin America, co-producing VR content for the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA), and is currently the producer/director for a national collaborative storytelling project partnering with 15 organizations to share the diverse stories of America’s immigration diaspora inside of XR for the first time.
Kathy is a steering committee member of Women in Next Realities- Boston, and has recently been a speaker on XR at the 2017 United Nations Environment Assembly in Nairobi, Kenya, at the national conferences of the Alliance for Community Media, NATOA, and the VR/ARA VR Storytelling Symposium, and at the regional Berklee XR conference. Kathy was also a panelist at the Boston Jewish Film Festival, curated the Interactive content for the 2016 and 2017 Northampton Film Festival, and was featured this month on the Virtuality Boston VR podcast.
Kathy is frequently found exploring new kayak routes, reading books in nooks, generally-adventuring, and being quite unreasonably curious. She recently celebrated her tenth year in community media.