Gabo Arora Biography

Gabo Arora is an award-winning filmmaker, creative technologist, and the Founder/CEO of LIGHTSHED, a narrative, technology, and research studio concentrating on new technologies such as virtual reality, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence. He is a Johns Hopkins University professor who created, directs, and is the Founding Director of the new Immersive Storytelling and Emerging Technology (ISET) program and lab. He was formerly a Senior Policy Advisor to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the UN's first-ever Creative Director, having over 15 years of expertise in the sector. He has directed, produced, and pioneered a series of widely acclaimed virtual reality documentaries (Clouds Over Sidra, Waves of Grace, and My Mother's Wing, among others) for the United Nations, which have all premiered at major film festivals around the world, including Cannes, Sundance, and Tribeca Film Festival, and have been featured at the World Economic Forum in Davos, screened at the White House, and have exhibted international interest. His VR experience, “The Last Goodbye,” commissioned by Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation, had its global premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival to widespread praise, with the Los Angeles Times calling it “game changing” and “transcending all the conventional limits of rectangle cinema.” His most recent VR experience, ZIKR, had its World Premiere at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival and was the festival's first-ever VR documentary to be sold and purchased. Gabo is a native New Yorker with honors degrees from NYU and Johns Hopkins University. He is a Davos World Economic Forum Arts and Cultural leader, and Francis Fukuyama nominated him for a term at the Council on Foreign Relations. His work has received an Emmy nomination, a Cannes Lion, a Sheffield Doc/Fest award for outstanding documentary, and has been featured in the New Yorker, the British Film Institute's Sight and Sound magazine, Fast Company, and the New York Times. He was included in Scott Hartley's book The Fuzzy and the Techie, and his work has been widely reported in the Guardian, Vice News, Wired, TED, NPR, and PBS Newshour.

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