MaryAnn Talavera is a creative technologist, filmmaker, and polyglot with a love for storytelling and cross-cultural communication. She studied immersive media, XR, and virtual production in the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. MaryAnn is the Associate Director of Recruitment in the Tisch Special Programs Office. Before joining Special Programs, she was a manager for the Alfred I. duPont and the Maria Moors Cabot awards at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.
MaryAnn also works as a 3D artist and in Creative Production at Lead Love, Death, Design, an immersive media studio focusing on social justice projects. As part of Octavia Immersive, a mixed-reality label/production team, MaryAnn joined the NYC Media Lab x ASCAP’s Music and Design Challenge. Last winter she participated in the Volumetric Performance Toolkit Residency where she helped create a web VR healing space. She recently received a 2021 HEAR US (Helping Elevate and Recapitalize Underrepresented Stories) Award, and as the founder of Rolos Productions, MaryAnn creates projects highlighting Black and Brown narratives and is passionate about working on projects that transcend borders.
Reese Antoinette is an actress and activist who has spent over a decade advocating for women, immigrants and youth empowerment across New York City. As a first generation Jamaican-American, she understands the complexity of culture and identity. That’s what inspires her to seek the humanity (or lack of humanity) in her characters. Her passion for storytelling inspired her to write and produce LIBERTY, a web series highlighting the intersectionality of race, gender and politics on Staten Island. Reese also recently wrote a blaxploitation sci-fi film JOAN. As she puts it, “I love stories that reimagine how black women contribute to stories in the past, present and the future: Everyday girls and women who do extraordinary things.”
Reese is a graduate of the NYU Graduate Acting Program, where she served as the NYU Tisch Graduate Student Organization Senator, Chair of the NYU Diversity committee, and the artistic director of Homebase 2021- a black theatrical experience with artists from NYU, Juilliard and Columbia University. She is also a graduate of The British American Drama Academy and The William Esper Studio.