Cortney Harding thinks the Spatial Race has already started, but most companies are lookiing 10 years ahead. As founder of Friends with Holograms and author of The Spatial Race, she works with Fortune 100 companies to build strategies in spatial computing and artificial intelligence before they get disrupted.

Cortney's real focus is solving the actual business problem first. She built an Amazon training where warehouse workers promoted to management roles could practice difficult conversations with AI-powered virtual humans at scale.

It worked because it started with a real problem: managers felt unprepared, team members felt disconnected, and in-person training couldn't scale. Most companies skip that step and start with "we need to do AI." That's why 95% of corporate AI pilots fail.

Episode Highlights:

• Amazon's management training challenge became a VR solution powered by AI, where employees built customized virtual humans to practice conversations at scale, resulting in a 92% improvement in outcomes across Irish warehouses.
• Companies fail at AI pilots because they reverse-engineer from the technology instead of starting with the business problem, and she's built her practice on helping teams think problem-first rather than technology-first.
• Enterprise adoption lags behind the hype because VR headsets are now simple to deploy—the real blocker is bad content.
• In 10 years, people will experience the world through head-mounted devices powered by AI, and companies that start building for that future now will survive the disruption while incumbents get left behind.

Cortney approaches immersive tech like a strategist, not a technologist. She teaches at Caltech, Barnard, and New Mexico State. She writes for Forbes. She's speaking on stages worldwide. Her core message: the spatial race is happening right now, and preparation beats disruption.

Watch the full conversation on YouTube https://youtu.be/w_bG57HBP6U.

About Cortney Harding

Cortney Harding is an in-demand expert in helping businesses harness the power of artificial intelligence, spatial computing, and virtual reality. She has created AI-powered conversational avatars for companies like Amazon, the NIH, and Verizon, and virtual reality training scenarios around topics like child abuse, workplace exclusion, mental health, Black maternal mortality, and racial bias for companies like Lowe’s, Walmart, PWC, Target, and more. She leads workshops for Fortune 100 companies and universities on how to use AI and VR in education and training.

Her work has been honored on numerous occasions. As an executive producer on JFK Memento, she was nominated for an Emmy and the piece won the audience award for best XR at SXSW and Best in the World at the QLD XR Festival. Her work has also been honored as the Best VR/AR of 2019 at Mobile World Congress, a SXSW Innovation Award Finalist, and a Top HR Product by HR Executive.

A "glow up" signifies a positive transformation, reflecting the journey of becoming a better, more successful version of oneself.

At The Tech Glow Up, we humanize the startup and innovation landscape by focusing on the essential aspects of the entrepreneurial journey. Groundbreaking ideas are often ahead of their time, making resilience and perseverance vital for founders and product leaders.

In our podcast, we engage with innovators to discuss their transformative ideas, the challenges they face, and how they create value for future success.

If you're a founder or product leader seeking your own glow up, or a seasoned entrepreneur with stories to share, we invite you to join our guest list via this link.

There's a philosophical difference between making a film and creating an experience. Paul Raphaël discovered that difference when he put the Oculus Rift on for the first time in 2013. He realized immediately that everything he'd been taught about cinema—framing, pacing, narrative structure—had to get rethought from the ground up. Twelve years later, he's still figuring out what immersive storytelling actually is.

At Felix and Paul Studios, they've designed cameras that didn't exist, built experiences where 160+ people free roam through a virtual ISS together, and just launched Interstellar Arc at Area 15 in Las Vegas—a full hour inside a purpose-built spaceport. But the technical accomplishments aren't what's interesting about Paul. What's interesting is his obsession: story serves feeling, not the other way around. Everything else gets sacrificed to that principle.

Episode Highlights:

• He spent years exploring immersion through projection mapping and 3D installations before VR showed up, and that foundation changed how he approached building for the medium.
• When he cracked how to shoot 360 stereoscopic 3D, he realized VR wasn't just a new platform—it was a fundamentally different medium that required rethinking everything about how to tell stories.
• Interstellar Arc abandons the three-act structure entirely, instead placing you in one hour of real-time experience waking up 260 years in the future approaching a new world.
• Paul protects creative freedom over financial opportunities, which means his team takes bigger risks and stays obsessed with exploring the medium instead of chasing quick wins.
• Tech companies keep building headsets not because they're stubborn, but because they understand immersive is inevitable—and it's going to take decades to build it right.

Paul approaches immersive storytelling like a medium that demands invention, not adaptation. His 12-year journey reveals why most VR experiences fall short: they're films pretending to be immersive, not experiences built from the ground up for the space around you.

Watch the full conversation on YouTube to hear how Paul navigates the tension between artistic obsession and survival, and why he believes VR filmmakers have to completely unlearn cinema.

About Paul Raphaël

Paul Raphaël is an Emmy® Award-winning filmmaker and creative technologist renowned for his pioneering work in immersive storytelling. Blending artistic vision with cutting-edge innovation, he continually redefines the boundaries of narrative experience to evoke a profound sense of presence and emotional connection.

As co-founder and Head of Innovation at Felix & Paul Studios, Paul spearheaded the development of proprietary camera systems that enabled Strangers with Patrick Watson.

In 2025, Felix & Paul Studios unveiled Interstellar Arc at AREA15 in Las Vegas—its most ambitious project to date.

A "glow up" signifies a positive transformation, reflecting the journey of becoming a better, more successful version of oneself.

At The Tech Glow Up, we humanize the startup and innovation landscape by focusing on the essential aspects of the entrepreneurial journey. Groundbreaking ideas are often ahead of their time, making resilience and perseverance vital for founders and product leaders.

In our podcast, we engage with innovators to discuss their transformative ideas, the challenges they face, and how they create value for future success.

If you're a founder or product leader seeking your own glow up, or a seasoned entrepreneur with stories to share, we invite you to join our guest list via this link.

Caitlin Lacey was supposed to teach Shakespeare to high school sophomores. Instead, she started at Facebook in 2010 answering ad review tickets; a move that turned into a decade shaping how billions of people connect online.

Now as Director of Global Product Marketing at Cisco, Webex, she oversees the WebEx collaboration suite and the hardware business that powers conference rooms, airports, and enterprise spaces around the world.

Her career has been defined by one principle: get out of the group chat and into the real world. Whether she was dogfooding early Facebook features or launching immersive collaboration tools at Cisco, Caitlin approaches technology through the lens of human connection and storytelling. S

Episode Highlights:

• Curiosity took her from answering ad review tickets to leading global product strategy, shaped by dogfooding products with her own family and learning how humans actually want to connect.
• Cisco Spatial Meetings lets design teams and city planners collaborate in real time within Apple Vision Pro, manipulating 3D models together and laying the foundation for when immersive collaboration becomes standard.
• Getting global alignment across teams in different time zones is the hardest part of her job, and she'd use a magic wand to get everyone in one room for 30 minutes to align on the market story.
• A CMO threw her on stage to demo a product two months after she started at Cisco, and that bet on her potential changed her trajectory and shaped how she now looks for sparks in her team.
• AI isn't going anywhere, but the humanity behind it is taking center stage, which means English degrees are about to become more valuable than they were five years ago.

The best stories start from a place of curiosity. Caitlin learned this at Facebook, proved it at Meta with emerging tech, and now applies it every day at Cisco as she defines the future of workplace collaboration.

Her path shows that the most valuable skill in tech isn't technical knowledge—it's the ability to understand what people need and tell them why it matters.

Watch the full conversation on YouTube to hear how Caitlin built her career by asking the right questions and believing in her team's potential.

About Caitlin Lacey

Caitlin is a product marketing leader with 15+ years of experience shaping go-to-market strategy across emerging technology, hardware, and collaboration software.

She leads marketing for Cisco’s Employee Experience portfolio, spanning devices and software that power hybrid work.

Known for building high-performing teams and crafting narratives that drive adoption, she brings a sharp focus on business impact and human connection.

A "glow up" signifies a positive transformation, reflecting the journey of becoming a better, more successful version of oneself.

At The Tech Glow Up, we humanize the startup and innovation landscape by focusing on the essential aspects of the entrepreneurial journey. Groundbreaking ideas are often ahead of their time, making resilience and perseverance vital for founders and product leaders.

In our podcast, we engage with innovators to discuss their transformative ideas, the challenges they face, and how they create value for future success.

If you're a founder or product leader seeking your own glow up, or a seasoned entrepreneur with stories to share, we invite you to join our guest list via this link.