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Victoria Bousis
Founder, Creative Director UME Studios

In her 20’s, Victoria started as a career prosecutor for the Attorney General of Illinois to bring justice to the disenfranchised. Later, as a producer for over a decade, she transcended social, political, and geographical barriers to bring powerful messages about the human experience to audiences with films at Venice, TIFF, and Sundance.Victoria followed technological advances and embraced XR and narrative gaming to speak to future generations. 

In 2018, Victoria earned a Master’s in Media, Technology, and Innovation from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), converging cinema, gaming and neuroscience to deliver powerful stories experienced differently by audiences with agency. Victoria founded UME, a creative and technology company to pioneer the future of storytelling across all mediums and platforms for film and series through virtual production pipelines, web 3.0 strategy, and customized XR experiences with digital worlds and humans for brands across fashion, entertainment, sports, music, and art. UME partnered with Dundas and DressX for the Metaverse Fashion Show in Decentraland, creating custom avatars and digital wearables of the physical collection as seen in Paris Fashion Week 2023.

Her groundbreaking immersive film, Stay Alive, My Son, based on the true story of Pin Yathay is her directorial debut, officially selected in Cannes’ development showcase. Chapter One also premiered at Venice, Berlin, Thessaloniki, FilmGate, to name a few winning numerous awards. In 2023, Chapter Two premiered in SXSW and won the PGA Innovation Award for 2023 - the “Oscar” - making movie history as the first interactive and immersive full-length movie in VR. In collaboration with the UNHCR, Stay Alive My Son is empowering change by impacting audiences and policy-makers to support family preservation, reunification, and refugee dignity. Currently, it is being showcased globally at festivals, technology and social impact conference in furtherance of this mission.

In 2023, Victoria was honored as a pioneering woman in Virtual Production and WiTH by the Hollywood Production Association. She is considered a visionary and pioneering voice in XR and a specialist in spatial computing, speaking at TEDxMIT, TEDxKlondozidika, NAB, NFT NYC, SIGGRAPH, etc. 

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