Nonny de la Peña

Peabody field builder winner Nonny de la Peña is the program director of ASU’s center for Emerging Media and Narrative, where she leads a best-in-class research and graduate program with a focus on new narratives developed using emerging media technologies in the areas of arts, culture and nonfiction. She comes to the new Los Angeles-based center, a joint undertaking by The Sidney Poitier New American Film School, in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, and the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, with more than 20 years working as an award-winning writer, director and producer in virtual, augmented and extended reality, film, print and television. As founder and CEO of Emblematic Group, de la Peña uses cutting-edge technologies to tell stories — both fictional and news-based — that create intense, empathic engagement on the part of viewers via immersive virtual, mixed and augmented reality. Her latest breakthrough is Emblematic's WebVR platform REACH.Love, a no-code toolset that creates scalable distribution in the medium, democratizes content authorship, and empowers new voices to share their stories.

De la Peña has appeared on the cover of the Wall Street Journal Magazine as Technology Innovator of the Year, was inducted into the SXSW Hall of fame in 2022 and was named one of CNET en Español’s 20 most influential Latinos in tech. Often called the “Godmother of Virtual Reality” for her pioneering work using cutting edge technologies to tell important stories, she is also a New America Fellow, a Yale Poynter Media Fellow and a former correspondent for Newsweek. Widely credited with pioneering the genre of immersive journalism, de la Peña was selected by Wired Magazine as a #MakeTechHuman Agent of Change, and Fast Company named her “One of the People Who Made the World More Creative.” She earned a BA in sociology and visual and environmental studies from Harvard University, an MA in online communities from the USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, and a PhD in media arts and practice from the USC School of Cinematic Arts.