Tana is a creative leader with proven expertise driving innovative vision, strategy, design, R&D, and production with multidisciplinary teams. With 20 years of experience in creative technology, she is adept at navigating ambiguity while balancing creative vision, design rigor, business acumen, and technical ingenuity.
Tana recently spent five years on the founding leadership team at Sphere, where she led experience strategy and design, real-time R&D, creator tools, and benchmark content to help bring the first-of-its-kind immersive venue and production studio from concept to reality. At Obscura Digital, she worked closely with the C-suite and high-profile clients such as Google, HP, AT&T, MGM, Salesforce, and AS+GG for Expo2020. Before Obscura, Tana collaborated with the founders at Gray Area and Recombinant Media Labs to define, build, launch, and operate immersive and interactive production facilities, artist residencies, education programs, incubators, and events with avant-garde luminaries, including Ryoji Ikeda, Alva Noto & Blixa Bargeld, Casey Reas, Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst, Erik Davis, Camille Utterback, Morton Subotnik, and more.
In the space between her work with Fortune 100 brands and visionary cultural institutions, Tana co-founded an art and technology studio, released ambient music, and created live visuals with musical collaborators at various stateside and international festivals. She earned a BA from UCSD and an MFA from Mills College, with theoretical and practical training in design, interactive and immersive media arts, computer music, audio, electrical, and software engineering.
In every context, Tana is driven by a passion for shaping culture through radical optimism, pragmatic idealism, imagination, and applied creativity. Enamored with our more-than-human world, she is currently exploring ways of integrating her passion and multidimensional expertise with life-centered regenerative design.
Expertise
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Creative Strategy
Technology Strategy
Experience Strategy / CX
Brand Strategy
Product Strategy
Future State / OKRs / KPIs
Planning & Roadmapping
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Design Strategy, Research & Synthesis
Linear, Interactive & Immersive Media
Art Direction & Visual Design
Spatial Experience Design
Service Design
UI/UX Design
Prototyping
Copywriting
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Audio, Video, Gaming, VFX, 2D/3D graphics pipelines
XR, Spatial Computing, and Novel Interfaces
Technical Architecture & Specification
Realtime frameworks
Mocap & Virtual Production
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Stakeholder Alignment
Cross-functional Leadership
Inclusive Team Building & Management
Organization Design & Resourcing
Workstreams Definition & Tools
Agile & Waterfall PM Methodologies
Vendor Engagement & Management
Strategic Partnerships
Pitching & Contracts
Contact
References
“Tana is a force. She is at once creative, strategic, and technical; a beloved manager and strong advocate. Not only is she is extremely knowledgeable about real-time technologies and the tech stack required to execute large-scale immersive experiences (LBX), she enforces thoughtful human-centric design and UX. Her unique skill and experience are incredibly rare and valuable in a world that is becoming increasingly immersive and interconnected.”
CEO/Co-founder at Lamina1. Magic Leap, Capitol Records, MIT and Carnegie Mellon alum.
“What truly sets Tana apart is her unwavering belief in the potential of her team members. She has an incredible knack for identifying talent and nurturing it, empowering individuals to grow both professionally and personally. Tana recognizes the importance of trust and delegation in building strong teams, and her confidence in others to lead on her behalf fosters a culture of collaboration, motivation, and collective success. Through her guidance and support, our team has flourished, and each member has been able to realize their full potential.”
Product Designer at Meta. Magic Leap, MIT, and Yale alum.
“Tana is a thoughtful and strategic technical leader. Tana and I worked together to develop the roadmap, required resourcing, and development milestones for Sphere's content development toolkit (required to support a multi million dollar advertising business unit). I found Tana to be collaborative, open to new ideas, be creative when looking for ways to speed up deadlines, and able to identify and call out cross-functional dependencies when needed. Tana is equal parts creative and technical - this is was obvious in her work in defining various scalable and repeatable ways in which beautiful content could come to life on the Sphere. Tana is very empathetic but at the same time not afraid to push back when in the best interest of the organization's goals. Any organization would be lucky to have Tana!”
VP, Product at Sphere. AWS and MIT alum.
“Tana has the rare ability to identify the unique strengths of each team member and leverage them to elevate the whole group. Her problem-solving style blends analytical rigor with creative thinking, inspiring us to deliver our best work. I wholeheartedly recommend Tana for any leadership role in the emerging tech industry.”
Lead Software Engineer at Sphere. DreamWorks and USC alum.