Meet our speaker Ana Serrano, Chief Digital Officer of the CFC and Founder of CFC Media Lab

Ana to speak at Animation Day with Michel Reihlac and Laurie Gordon on VR

Ana Serrano is the Chief Digital Officer of the CFC and Founder of CFC Media Lab, the world-renowned and award-winning institute for interactive storytelling created in 1997.

With her visionary direction and digitally-forward approach to organizational growth, Serrano is driving the digital transformation of the CFC into a unique blend of talent, product and company accelerator and creative production house. She continually evolves the CFC's programs as digital media demand new approaches – from the early exploration of web-based storytelling to today’s world of audience-driven multiplatform entertainment. Most recently, she launched Canada's first digital entertainment accelerator IDEABOOST with founding partners Shaw Media, Corus Entertainment, and Google.

In her capacity as CDO, Serrano created the CFC's digital roadmap which includes the design, development, and multi-stakeholder execution of the CFC's digital communications and cloud-based operations infrastructure, and the digital strategy surrounding all of their program offerings. A major part of this roadmap is the complete redesign of the user experience, architecture, and backend of the CFC's website, featuring fully responsive design, data-driven information architecture, and improved customer service functionality.

To date, Serrano has directed the development of over 130 digital media projects, mentored over 50 start-ups, and produced some of Canada’s seminal works in interactive media. Such projects include the critically-acclaimed Late Fragment, the first interactive dramatic feature film to be featured at the Toronto International Film Festival and distributed by Mongrel Media, to the most recent award-winning Webby-Honouree Body/Mind/Change, starring David Cronenberg, an interactive narrative experience that generates a physical 3D printed object.

Serrano has received numerous awards from the digital media, film, and theatre industries in both Canada and the U.S., including a Digital Media Trailblazing Award in 2015 from the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television, a Best Canadian Feature Film Award in 2012 from the International Reel Asian Film Festival for her own transmedia production Prison Dancer: the Musical, and a Jim Blackaby Ingenuity Award in 2013 for Body/Mind/Change.

She is an adjunct professor at OCADu, an Executive Member of the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences (IADAS) which presents the Webbys, and frequently speaks at digital media and film festivals around the world about the creation and business of digital entertainment.