Scale Up Immersive Announces Speakers & Panelists for first 2023 Session

Our Scale Up Immersive Program is starting the year strong with our Speakers & Panelists for the second session of the program.

Young Guru

Grammy Nominated Sound Engineer for Roc-A-Fella Records

Revered as "The Sound of New York," Young Guru possesses over a decade of experience in sound engineering, production, and A&R for the acclaimed Roc-A-Fella Records and Def Jam Recordings. Most recognized for shaping some of the biggest talent in Hip Hop, Young Guru has mixed 10 of Jay-Z's 11 albums, and has earned himself a number of shout-outs on Jay-Z's tracks paying homage to his exceptional skills behind the boards.

Young Guru acquired his moniker as a teen when he taught African history classes at a community center. He also used his name when he began working as a DJ while still a teenager.[1] In the early 1990s Young Guru bought his own amplifiers, lights and microphones which sparked his interest in music technology. He began DJ'ing in Washington DC in 1996, where he met singer/rapper Nonchalant, who had a top 20 single at the time, and became her tour DJ. Young Guru, who had taken piano lessons as a child, used the money he received from the tour to fund a six-month music recording course at Omega Recording Studios in Rockville, Maryland, which had a great impact on him. After Omega, Young Guru engineered Nonchalant's second album, which was never released, but the producer, Chucky Thompson (Mary J. Blige, Faith Evans) recognized the young engineer's potential and invited him to come and work with him in Washington DC. In 1999, Young Guru went independent and moved to New York, where he worked with Deric "D-Dot" Angelettie on his Madd Rapper project and with Memphis Bleek. The latter was signed to Roc-A-Fella Records, which led to Young Guru meeting Jay-Z.

Over the years Young Guru has been a major part of several artists' careers in addition to Jay-Z, including Beyoncé, Rihanna, Ludacris, Ghostface Killah, Freeway, Cam'ron, Redman & Method Man, Mariah Carey, Pete Rock, Fabulous, Talib Kweli, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony and T.I.

Tamara Shogaolu

Emmy® Award-winning Director | Creative Director at Ado Ato Pictures

Tamara Shogaolu is an Emmy award-winning director, writer, artist and creative technologist whose innovative approach to storytelling has been lauded by Forbes, The Guardian and Vogue naming her a visionary in the field.

As the founder and creative director of Ado Ato Pictures, Shogaolu is the first Black Latina woman to head a leading studio specializing in film, animation and technology. With an emphasis on storytelling that uplifts historically marginalized voices, her dynamic work has shown at top festivals, galleries and museums worldwide including the MoMA in New York, Tribeca Film Festival, the National Gallery of Indonesia, among others. In addition, Shogaolu has written for Sony Pictures Animations and partnered on projects with the Sundance Institute, Netflix, PBS, Frontline and the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival (LALIFF).

A creative force on the rise, Shogaolu won the 2022 SXSW Innovation Award for Visual Media, the Best Digital Storytelling Award at IDFA 2021 and was nominated for a Gouden Kalf Award, the top film prize in the Netherlands (2019, 2022).

Shogaolu holds an MFA from the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, where she was a Burton Lewis Endowed Scholar for Directing. Currently, she is a fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)'s Open Documentary Lab and an inaugural Motion Picture Academy Accelerator Fellow; she was also an Academy Nicholls Fellowship semi finalist, a Fulbright Scholar in Egypt and a Luce Scholar in Indonesia.

The Scale Up Immersive Accelerator is funded by the Government of Canada through the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario