DeFiance Media | IcebreakerDeFiance Media
DeFiance Media
Members

Dennis is a seasoned executive with over 25 years of experience in business development, marketing strategy, and technology innovation across industries such as renewable energy, life sciences, immersive media, and mobile software. He has held key leadership positions in startups and large corporations alike, driving growth, raising capital, and launching innovative products.
Dennis serves as Business Development Director at Tomorrow.Media, an emerging technology firm
specializing in Extended, Augmented and Virtual Reality (XR/AR/VR) In this role, he has led the development of immersive sports gaming software and managed high-profile projects for global clients like Google and Facebook. He also spearheaded the successful G200 XR Sports Arena project in Ecuador, which featured AR-based simulations for sports like tennis and soccer.
From 2022 to 2023, Dennis was SVP of Communications at Calder Biosciences, where he developed strategic communications to position the company within the biotech investment community.
Earlier in his career, Dennis was Chief Marketing Officer at VR World NYC, where he generated over $5M in ticket sales for the world’s largest VR entertainment facility. He also co-founded SpaceoutVR, a social VR Sci-Fi game, which attracted over 300,000 downloads and sold its IP for $850K. His leadership experience extended to LG AD Russia and Yahoo! Russia, where he oversaw digital marketing efforts, product localization, and corporate development in key international markets.
Dennis also has a strong entrepreneurial background, having founded Wicked Wireless, a mobile entertainment company, and held senior roles in companies like Newtek Business Services, VentureHighway.com, Inc. and Pseudo Programs, Inc. His diverse career reflects his passion for innovation, team building, and developing cutting-edge solutions in both technology and communications.
In addition to his professional work, Dennis is exploring AI-driven creativity as an author, electronic music performer, and AI content creator. With a background in launching market-leading products and expanding global business opportunities, Dennis continues to shape the future of technology and entertainment. Dennis has a degree in Fine Arts from New York University graduating in 1994. 
Head of Global Web3 and Metaverse accelerator focused on transitioning enterprises and building ventures with Generative AI, DeFi, NFTs, Metaverse, AR/VR, Web3, and other disruptive growth strategies in entertainment, film and TV production, music, games, digital media, and fintech spaces. Mariana is a deal maker and expert negotiator and has served in an executive producer, content aggregator, and chief revenue officer role for several startups and later stage companies. She has managed strategy, content licensing, content acquisition and cross platform distribution, business development, corporate development, advertising, brand integration, marketing, and revenue generation for Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox, NASPERS, KPMG”s Digital Incubator, Peter Guber's Mandalay Entertainment, Michael Milken's Knowledge Universe, and three dozen startup digital media platforms and networks.
Her deal experience includes long-term contracts and transactions with NFL, MLB, NBC, ESPN, Fox, EBU, BBC, QVC, Sony Pictures Entertainment, A&E, HBO, IMG, VH1, Universal, Microsoft, Intel, HP, Panasonic, AOL, Globo, NTT, Samsung, Amazon, Target, Tencent.
Mariana has launched and advised over three dozen startup companies focused on global AR/VR, AI, blockchain, Multi-Channel Networks, OTT, e-commerce, entertainment content, multi-platform distribution, content partnerships, production, distribution, and licensing of video content, VOD, mobile eco systems, branded entertainment, film, broadcast television, and social media.
Mariana served on the Board of Directors of Producers Guild of America, Board of Directors of Tim Draper’s Zone Club, and Mayor Richard Riordan’s Digital Coast Roundtable. 
I help executives (including C-Suite and NEDs), and marketing teams understand the impact of AI on their organizations and augment the power of their teams with AI and reimagined workflows.
For over a decade I've helped companies do mind-bending things with new and emerging technologies by showing them how to create, monetize and scale with bleeding-edge tech when few best practices and instruction manuals exist. At Signal and Cipher, we're focused on decoding the future of work for our clients.
My mission as a futurist and speaker is to inspire people to take ownership of their role in shaping the future, participate in building the world they want to see, be the wrong person asking the right questions, and approach the future with wonder, curiosity, and hope, not fear and confusion. The future is ours to shape, but you don't win by being as a spectator.
_____
Considered one of the top voices in AI and the future of work, Ian is a trusted advisor to the world's most innovative companies. His firm Signal and Cipher transforms companies into AI-ready organizations with training, workforce reengineering, design, and development, resulting in meaningful routes to innovation that impact the bottom line, inspire cultural change, and create new products and ways of working.
Previously responsible for P&Ls and innovation departments at the largest agencies in the world, Ian is known for making bleeding-edge technology understandable and monetizable. Brands he has advised over the last decade include Samsung, Intel, Coca-Cola, Google, Microsoft, Nike, and dozens more.
Ian has pioneered a digitally immersive presentation style that brings artificial intelligence and extended reality to life so audiences can understand the future of technology in actionable ways. Ian is also the co-owner of a production studio designing virtual worlds and the first person ever to host a news segment as a synthetic human, streaming to over 100 million devices around the world.
A classically trained musician, Ian understands the magnitude of AI's coming impact on human creativity. As a strategist and speaker, he strives to educate stakeholders on the real-world implications of emerging technologies so they can make informed decisions that positively shape our world and advance humanity. In a rapidly evolving world that some consider dystopian, Ian remains a steadfast optimist and offers what everyone needs now: hope.
Specialties: AI • Machine Vision • Emerging Technology • Digital Strategy • Process Engineering • Prototyping • Systems Thinking • Team Leadership