The Inaugural Class (2024-25)
It all begins with an idea …
Distinguished Innovation Fellow Gabriel Bey is creating PHXMF, a festival that skips the Hollywood glamour and focuses on the actual work—showcasing the tools, tech, and behind-the-scenes people who make movies, music, and games. It's about highlighting "the lower credits" folks and building Arizona's creative workforce through hands-on demos instead of red carpet nonsense.
Take Flight 🚀
DIF Fellow Dr. Sian Proctor went to space, got bathed in the cosmic glow of Earth's light reflecting back at her, and now she's bringing that mind-bending perspective down to the rest of us through art, poetry, and VR experiences.
Most people talk about the "overview effect" - Sian paints it, writes about it, and builds immersive worlds around it. It's what happens when the first Black female private spacecraft pilot decides that everyone deserves to feel what it's like to see Earth as a glowing beacon in the darkness of space.
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Neil Urban
Architect
A former city planner who got sick of cities sprawling sideways like spilled coffee, so he's designing them to grow upward instead. His Z-aXis concept treats cities as three-dimensional puzzles where people live and move vertically as naturally as they do horizontally - because when you run out of room to spread out, the only way to go is up.
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Kaden
Teacher
A former college professor who ditched the lecture hall to build something better - a program that lets people chart their own course to mental wellness through creative expression. Instead of therapists telling you what to do, her approach hands you the paintbrush, pen, or whatever artistic tool speaks to you and says "go heal yourself." It's self-directed therapy for people who know their own minds better than any textbook ever could.
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Rene Diaz
Professor
Teachers know their stuff, but they're teaching creativity like it's algebra. René spent decades in higher ed and watched countless educators struggle to unlock their students' creative potential because nobody taught them how. Now he's building a program that shows teachers how to actually nurture creativity instead of accidentally crushing it.
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Bryan Goeger
Business Executive
People are living 20+ years longer than their grandparents, but nobody updated the life manual. We're still pretending you go to school, work for 40 years, then retire and die—except now there's this awkward 20-year gap where nobody knows what the hell they're supposed to be doing. Bryan's building a roadmap for men 45+ who are staring down decades of life they never planned for and don't know how to navigate.