Nonny de la Peña


Nonny de la Peña is an American journalist, documentary filmmaker, and entrepreneur.
She is the founder and CEO of Emblematic Group, a digital media company focused on immersive virtual, mixed and augmented reality. De la Peña is widely credited with helping create the genre of immersive journalism. She combines Unity graphics with real witness audio to recreate powerful events the user can experience using virtual reality headsets.
De la Peña was selected by Wired Magazine as #MakeTechHuman Agent of Change and has been called the "Godmother of Virtual Reality" by Forbes, Engadget and The Guardian. Additionally, Fast Company recently listed de la Peña as one of the "13 People Who Made the World More Creative."
She is also a 2018 New America National Fellow, member of the BAFTA VR Advisory Group, a TED speaker and the 2016 recipient of the Knight Innovation Award.
A former correspondent for Newsweek magazine, writer for The New York Times and other major news organizations, de la Peña's start in virtual reality began in 2006.

Early life, education and career

De la Peña was raised in Venice, California. She attended Harvard University and received a BA in Sociology and Visual and Environmental Studies. She later attended the University of Southern California and received a MA in Online Communities from the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and a PhD in Media Arts + Practice from the USC School of Cinematic Arts.
After graduating from Harvard, de la Peña freelanced in Mexico with the assistance of the Fund of Investigative Journalism. She also worked for Associated Press photo for the 1984 Olympics and 1986 World Cup. De la Peña later joined Time magazine as a stringer before becoming a correspondent for Newsweek in 1987.
Throughout the early 1990s, de la Peña contributed to several periodicals, including La Familia De Hoy, Caravan and Buzz. In 1991, she was associate producer for the HBO investigative documentary Death on the Job, which was nominated for the Academy Awards' Best Documentary Feature.
She went on to co-produce CourtTV documentaries 'Chappaquiddick' and 'Death at Ft. Devans' in 1993 and 1994, respectively. During the next few years she also wrote on staff for television series New York Undercover and wrote two pilots for CBS with her writing partner Angel Dean Lopez. One of the pilots was produced by Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald who went on to helm DreamWorks.
De la Peña was also a New York Times freelancer from 2007 to 2010.

Pyedog Productions

De la Peña established Pyedog Productions in 1994, following her role as associate producer for the Academy Award nominated film Death on the Job. The studio focused on feature-length documentaries surrounding social and cultural impact stories, including Unconstitutional: The War on Our Civil Liberties, The Jaundiced Eye and Mama/MAMA.
In the mid-2000s, de la Peña began development on virtual reality pieces Gone Gitmo and Hunger in Los Angeles, the company would eventually be rebranded as Emblematic Group in 2007.

Virtual Reality Beginnings

In 2007, de la Peña collaborated with digital media artist Peggy Weil to bring a portion of the 2004 Pyedog documentary Unconstitutional: The War on Our Civil Liberties into an immersive environment called 'Gone Gitmo.' With a grant from the Bay Area Video Coalition and the MacArthur Foundation, they ported the Guantanamo Bay sequence to simulation video game Second Life to construct a virtual prison, allowing users to be incarcerated and subjected to torture techniques.
'Gone Gitmo' went on to be featured in New Scientist, Vanity Fair, Der Spiegel, and Chronicle of Higher Education. It was also the cover story for the International Documentary Magazine in March 2009 and was later installed at Laboral in Gijon, Spain for "The Angel of History" exhibit, co-curated by Whitney Museum of Art. In June 2013, 'Gone Gitmo' was exhibited at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art.
As a senior research fellow at USC in 2009, de la Peña began experimenting with virtual reality headsets. By 2010, she started work on 'Hunger in Los Angeles,' an offshoot of the USC and Center for Investigative Journalism project 'Hunger in the Golden State.' With the help of her intern Michaela Kobsa-Mark and USC's Mixed Reality Lab, de la Peña built the VR piece.
'Hunger in Los Angeles' became the first-ever VR documentary to be showcased at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2012. To ensure a headset for the event, Palmer Luckey, then a part-time employee of the MxR lab, was commissioned to create goggles for the Sundance premiere. Nine months later, Luckey started Oculus Rift.

Emblematic Group

Established in 2007 by de la Peña, Emblematic Group has created high impact virtual reality content with an emphasis on linear storytelling. Using cutting edge technologies, the group strives to tell stories that create empathic engagement on the part of viewers. Emblematic has also been commissioned for branded content and utilized an experimental volumetric capture platform.

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