
Visual Effects Society Announces its 2021 Board of Directors Officers
data-src=https://creativecow.net/wp-content/uploads/avatars/263018/5fa08c562aaf4-bpthumb.jpg data-srcset=https://creativecow.net/wp-content/uploads/avatars/263018/5fa08c561c0e7-bpfull.jpg 2x class=lazyload avatar avatar-80 photo height=80 width=80 />
Brie Clayton January 21, 2021
0 Comments
Lisa Cooke has been elected Board Chair, and is the first woman to lead the global organization.
data-src=https://gcs.creativecow.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/21225547/Lisa-Cooke600.jpg alt= class=lazyload wp-image-2401617/>Today, the Visual Effects Society (VES), the industry's global professional honorary society, announced its 2021 Board of Directors officers. The officers, who comprise the VES Board Executive Committee, were elected at the January 2021 Board meeting. The officers include Lisa Cooke, who was elected Board Chair, and is the first woman to hold this role in the Society's history. The five officers embody the global makeup up the Society, coming from Sections in the United States, New Zealand and London.
The Society is proud to have exceptional leadership represented on our Executive Committee, said Eric Roth, VES Executive Director. This is a group of impassioned and venerated professionals with a vision for the Society's future, especially amidst this time of dynamic change. We appreciate their commitment to serve our organization and our members worldwide.
It is my great honor and privilege to Chair this society of exceptional artists and innovators, said Lisa Cooke, VES Chair. I'm proud to be the first woman in this role, and I'm committed to lifting up our future leaders, so that I'm not the last. I look forward to working with the Executive Committee and Board of Directors to support our members during these challenging times and advance the work to propel the Society and the industry forward.
The 2021 Officers of the VES Board of Directors are:
Chair: Lisa Cooke
1st Vice Chair: Emma Clifton Perry
2nd Vice Chair: David H. Tanaka
Treasurer: Jeffrey A. Okun, VES
Secretary: Gavin Graham
Lisa Cooke, Chair
Lisa Cooke has spent several decades in the entertainment industry as an animation/FX industry producer, story consultant, screenwriter and actor. Firmly believing that effective science communication is vital to our world, she founded Green Ray Media, and for the last ten-plus years, has been producing animation and VFX to create scientific, medical and environmental media for a broad audience.
Cooke has worked for entertainment clients including Lucasfilm, Fox, Nickelodeon Films, ABC, CBS, Paramount and Universal and in the VFX and animation industry for companies including Pixar, Glasgow-based Digital Animations Group and Tippett Studio. As Senior Producer at Reardon Studios, she helped bring MOVA Contour Reality Capture to the film industry.
Cooke has also taught story structure at the SF Academy of Art, JFK University and Ex'pression College, and is a member of the Screen Actors Guild. She served six years on the VES Bay Area Board of Managers Executive Committee and as Chair, before joining the VES Board of Directors, where she serves as Chair of the Archive Committee. In 2019 she held the position of 2nd Vice Chair and served as 1st Vice Chair in 2020. She is honored to Chair the Visual Effects Society in 2021.
Emma Clifton Perry, 1st Vice Chair
Emma Clifton Perry has more than 15 years experience across feature films, longform/TV series, commercials and advertising.
Clifton Perry offers a truly global perspective, having lived everywhere from Saudi Arabia to Canada. She has worked both in-house with FOX and at VFX facilities worldwide including WETA Digital, Framestore, MPC, Rising Sun Pictures, DrD, Method Studios and The Mill, amongst others, working both as an artist and in leadership roles. She is currently based in Wellington, New Zealand, providing remote compositing and VFX consulting/lecturing services worldwide. She studied at the NCCA, Bournemouth University, UK.
This is Clifton Perry's second consecutive term on the Executive Committee, serving as 2nd Vice Chair in 2020. Clifton Perry has served for four consecutive years on the Board of Directors and eight cumulative years on the New Zealand Board of Managers. She was the 2nd ever New Zealand Section Chair, serving as Chair for three years and a year as secretary/treasurer.
David H. Tanaka, 2nd Vice Chair
David H. Tanaka has worked in visual effects and animation for over 25 years. For 15 years he served at Industrial Light & Magic in VFX Editorial on such films as Jurassic Park, Forrest Gump, and Star Wars. He went on to work on Cars, Ratatouille, WALL E, UP, and Toy Story 3 as a Special Projects Editor at Pixar Animation Studios over the next 10 years.
In 2015, in addition to his freelance editing for studios, corporations and private clientele, Tanaka served as Editor, VFX Supervisor, Post-Production Supervisor and Co-Executive Producer on the independent feature film Guitar Man (currently in festival run and garnering awards for Best Editing and Best Picture). Tanaka is also an Adjunct Professor for the Academy of Art University, San Francisco, specializing in Editing, Producing and Cinema History.
David H. Tanaka has been a proud member of the Visual Effects Society for close to two decades. He served three terms as the VES Bay Area Section Chair, and one term as Co-Chair. Now in his third term on the VES Board of Directors, he has collaborated on projects ranging from educational outreach and VFX workplace code of conduct standards, to special VFX artist tributes and establishing best editorial practices for the VES Archives Committee.
Jeffrey A. Okun, VES Treasurer
Jeffrey A. Okun, VES, is known for creating organic' and invisible effects, as well as spect
North America Stories
18/11/2025
Women In Media (WiM) announces its honorees for the 2025 Holiday Toast. The annual celebration recognizes legendary creatives whose work uplifts and inspires th...
18/11/2025
Cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra ( Good Fortune , The Bear , Euphoria ) emerged from the 2025 Emmy season with a statuette celebrating his Outstanding Cinem...
18/11/2025
Atlanta-based gaffer and lighting programmer Quinton Thomas brings the same practical, problem-solving instinct of a board op to every set he walks onto. With a...
18/11/2025
Suitelife Systems, a division of NFB Consulting Group, headquartered in California, has announced the appointments of Charles Sotto as Director of Media Technol...
18/11/2025
Sound Director and Audio Product Manager Scott Kramer has built a career around shaping stories through audio, guiding projects across film, television and stre...
18/11/2025
iWedia, a global leader in software solutions for connected TV devices, announces its participation at the APAC TV Summit 2025, taking place November 18 20 in B...
18/11/2025
Mark Roberts Motion Control (MRMC) is proud to announce the launch of Flair Bridge, a groundbreaking solution that redefines how operators control MRMC's in...
18/11/2025
Over the summer, world famous musician and rapper Drake continued the rollout of his new album Iceman, by live streaming the second and third episodes of a seri...
18/11/2025
KEIZER, Ore. Municipal broadcaster Keizer City Television, K23 TV, has deployed four Telycam PTZ cameras to upgrade the visual quality of its live meeting cover...
18/11/2025
STAMFORD, Conn. NBC Sports and Peacock have announced that they are working for the second consecutive year with the National Football League, EA Sports and Gen...
18/11/2025
LONDON A new Ampere Analysis study finds that familiar franchises are successfully driving kids' TV consumption on Netflix and that the streamers big bet on...
18/11/2025
PORTSMOUTH, N.H. TV viewers continue to find it challenging to find relevant programs in the fragmented universe of streaming content, according to new findings...
18/11/2025
20 Bob Dylan Songs That Reflect a Legacy of A-Changin On the heels of Bob Dylan receiving a Berklee honorary doctorate, we take stock of one of the most singu...
17/11/2025
EA SPORTS Madden NFL Cast to Return Thanksgiving Night With Immersive, Data-Driv...
17/11/2025
Behind the Broadcast Booth: Impact Ventures' Greer Christian on Building Her...
17/11/2025
SVG Sit-Down: Sportradar's Brian Josephs Talks Peacock's Powerful Perfor...
17/11/2025
2025 Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame: Greg Gumbel, Iconic Voice and Comforting ...
17/11/2025
ESPN, Pixar, the NFL, and Beyond Sports Team Up for ESPN's Dec. 8 Monsters,...
17/11/2025
SVG Sit-Down: EA SPORTS' Evan Dexter on How the EA SPORTS Madden NFL Cast...
17/11/2025
Dealmaking for broadcast stations continues to heat up, with Sinclair reporting it has built up a 8.2% stake in E.W. Scripps and has been talking with Scripps f...
17/11/2025
The worlds online population grew by more than 240 million people in 2025, according to Facts and Figures 2025 released today by the International Telecommunica...
17/11/2025
ASB GlassFloor, the leading provider in LED sports flooring, today announced the opening of Athletes Lab 2.0, a premier athletic training facility designed to e...
17/11/2025
SmallHD today announced the release of its popular Camera Control for Canon cinema cameras. This new integration enables filmmakers to adjust critical camera se...
17/11/2025
Luxury is in the details, and no one captures that better than the creative team at Samuel & Sons. As the visionaries behind iconic photography and advertising ...
17/11/2025
NVIDIA Apollo - a family of open models for accelerating industrial and computat...
17/11/2025
To power future technologies including liquid-cooled data centers, high-resoluti...
17/11/2025
At SC25, NVIDIA unveiled advances across NVIDIA BlueField DPUs, next-generation networking, quantum computing, national research, AI physics and more - as accel...
17/11/2025
Across quantum physics, digital biology and climate research, the world's researchers are harnessing a universal scientific instrument to chart new frontier...
17/11/2025
It used to be that computing power trickled down from hulking supercomputers to ...
16/11/2025
L3Harris to deliver advanced electronic warfare systems quickly for worldwide F-16 programs...
16/11/2025
Upgrading your Apogee Symphony MKII from TB2 to TB3: Need to Knows Upgrading your Apogee interface to Thunderbolt 3 isn't difficult - but it's not a cas...
16/11/2025
Apogee Electronics Acquired by Dirk Ulrich's Rockforce Tech Holding, Parent ...
15/11/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The Walt Disney Company and YouTube TV have reached a new multi-year distribution agreement, ending a carriage dispute that had blacked out ABC,...
15/11/2025
PLYMOUTH, Wis. A group of about 20 TV technology vendors supporting NextGen TV are wrapping up their ATSC 3.0 Interop here at Heartland Video Systems headquarte...
15/11/2025
NEW YORK NBCUniversal has announced that it will be launching NBC Sports Network (NBCSN), a 24/7 linear network featuring a wide range of marquee sporting event...
15/11/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has released an updated agenda for its Open Meeting on Thursday, November 20, 2025, which is scheduled to comme...
15/11/2025
JERSEY CITY, N.J. OpenVault has released new data showing that DOCSIS 3.1 and higher services are driving significant across-the-board increases in speed and co...
15/11/2025
ATLANTA Gray Media has concluded an agreement with the Ohio Valley Conference ( OVC ) to broadcast OVC college basketball games across 20 Gray markets in five s...
15/11/2025
NEW BERN, N.C. Wheatstone has named company veteran Darrin Paley vice president of business accounts, effective immediately....
15/11/2025
Back to All News
Netflix Serves Up the Trailer for Dining with the Kapoors'...
14/11/2025
Op-Ed: The Automation Imperative - Why AI Is the Only Scalable Defense Against L...
14/11/2025
FutureSPORT 2025: Caretta Research on why streaming won't save broadcasters By Jo Ruddock
Monday, November 10, 2025 - 14:37
Print This Story
Caretta R...
14/11/2025
Daneysse Daniels, Emmy-Winning Production Manager and Beloved Teammate at TNT Sp...
14/11/2025
The NBA 2K League Returns as an Immersive Entertainment Ecosystem' With Non...
14/11/2025
Inaugural SVG LIVE! Conference Brings 250 Top Sports and Entertainment Producti...
14/11/2025
(L-R) Suzette Quintanilla, Isabel Castro, and Chris P rez attend the 2025 Sundan...
14/11/2025
Boston Conservatory Orchestra to Perform at Carnegie Hall for United Nations Gen...
14/11/2025
Berklee Alum Lewis Pickett Wins Record of the Year at Latin Grammy Awards Pickett, a 2009 graduate, was nominated six times across three categories at this ye...
14/11/2025
PLYMOUTH, Wisc. A group of about 20 TV technology vendors supporting NextGen TV are wrapping up their ATSC 3.0 Interop here at Heartland Video Services headquar...
14/11/2025
What if your idle operations centers, inactive cloud time, staff or you as a freelancer could start generating revenue tomorrow?
NECF Corporation today announc...