Company Info for cultureshockny.com | IcebreakerMembers
Debra McGrory is founder of Kinetek (an immersive media production company), a dynamic digital innovator, creative producer, curator, educator, and seasoned entrepreneur with expertise in digital media, XR technologies, immersive art and storytelling. She was in the first cohort at MIT PlayLabs accelerator for VR/AR/AI startups (2017) and skilled in producing immersive and multisensory transmedia experiences using using Generative AI and XR. She is an Assistant Professor at The New School. In 2025 she taught the first Generative Art and AI course at Williams College. She recognized as an innovative leader by Fast Company, data sonification expert by Google, and has provided emerging tech consultancy to the UN. Debra has a long-standing reputation for designing, implementing, and leveraging cutting-edge digital technologies, she launched four Google-supported data-driven software products. She has a talent in understanding and managing complex data projects and communicating concepts to technical and non-technical audiences.
Speaking Highlights (5 years)
• Stanford University – Data Sonification Guest Lecture, Data Journalism Course
• Medill-Northwestern University – Beyond Data Visualization Guest Lecture, Data Journalism Course
• Google – DATAVIS TALKS – 1st external expert to speak on Data Visualization and Sonification
• National security-focused US Government agency/audience – Emerging Technologies/Adapting to Disruption
• Fast Company – ‘What’s Next for Virtual Reality’ and 3D data panel at Fast Company Innovation Festival
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology – XR Hackathon – ‘Building Immersive Data Visualization Using WebXR”
• United Nations – Consultant VR/Data Expert – E-Analytics training to departments OICT, DPA and UNITAR
• Harvard WeCode Conference – Guest lecture - ‘The Value of Immersive Visualization’
• World Bank Group – Visual Knowledge: Beyond Words – Data Visualization and Knowledge Management
• Uniondocs – Storytelling for Immersive Documentary Workshop – ‘Immersive Storytelling Using WebXR’
• Digital Hollywood Conference – ‘VR-AR Production on the Edge: Storytelling in Content and Advertising’
Awards & Recognition
• New York Times / NYC Media Lab Spatial Computing Challenge, Winner, 2020.
• Research Fellow, Urban Systems Lab, 2020.
• Online News Association Journalism 360 Award, Winner, 2019.
• The New School, Design For Aging, Research Grant, Winner 2019.
• Gannett Foundation Award for Technical Innovation in the Service of Digital Journalism, Finalist, 2019.
• Kantar Information Is Beautiful Awards, Finalist, 2019. 
Hugh McGrory is pioneering new forms of immersive cinema, combining Virtual Production and traditional filmmaking with Generative AI to create high resolution cinematic immersive experiences for multiscreen spaces, domes, and the Metaverse.
Hugh innovates at the intersection of emerging media, art and technology. His work has evolved from film and photography through data and sonification, to virtual reality and artificial intelligence. Hugh is CEO and Founder at Kinetek, an immersive media company based at the Massachusetts Museum Of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA).
Hugh's professional experience spans the worlds of art and technology:
Art
Hugh ran Make, a film and generative animation studio in collaboration with computer artist Glenn Marshall in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where he directed and produced award-winning experimental short films. After a summer artist residency in microscopy imaging at Yale University in 2007, Hugh moved to New York City in 2008 where worked for over a decade curating audiovisual interactive installations during Art Basel and Volta Art Fair in New York, Miami and Switzerland. Highlights include screening work by Beeple (Mike Winkelmann) in 2011 - 10 years before he sold an NFT at Christie's for $69 million, and exhibiting robotic experiments by Alexander Reben (Open AI's first artist in residence) in 2013. In 2011, Hugh also brought the partners together for The Andy Warhol Film Digitization Project, featuring over 500 films by Warhol, developed in collaboration with The Moving Picture Company and Technicolor and described in the NY Times as “the largest effort to digitize the work of a single artist in MoMA’s collection.”
Technology
Hugh has led teams from ideation to execution on four web-based software applications; Morph (for data art), TwoTone (data sonification), Geometric (virtual reality) and Airfield (spatial audio). In 2017 he completed the Playlabs Accelerator at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for AR/VR/AI startups. Hugh was a Finalist for the Gannett Foundation Award for Technical Innovation in the Service of Digital Journalism in 2019 and Winner of the Online News Association’s Journalism360 Award in 2018. 
