Producer · Director · Content Strategist
Barry
Pousman
Award-winning producer and content strategist with nearly 20 years of films, series, social, and immersive work for technology companies, global institutions, and brands.
Experience2006 — Now
Founder
An ongoing, experienced video team for growing companies: capturing what's already happening inside the business and turning it into useful content.
Content Strategist
Content and growth strategy for the Lab, including the launch of Season 2 of the playing god? podcast with Pushkin Industries. Translating complex topics in medicine, AI, and bioethics into accessible stories.
Producer & Director
Research-led video for Helpfully, a UX research and design consultancy, including Outside Insights, a weekly scripted series on behavioral science in everyday life.
Head of Content
Ran social and digital content for a regulated fintech: 60+ campaigns in 52 weeks, long-form turnaround cut from three weeks to five days, YouTube reach up 250%, past 100K subscribers, and a YouTube Silver Creator Award.
Executive Director
Created and led a Meta-funded creative technology initiative reaching 5,000+ learners across eight community sites, with 22 courses and digital experiences.
Founding Partner & Executive Producer
Branded, documentary, immersive, and experiential projects for technology companies, global organizations, and agencies, presented at Davos, Sundance, Tribeca, SXSW, and Venice.
Video Lead, Growth Marketing
Directed the Webby Award–winning campaign Create Your World.
Director, Content Marketing & Digital Strategy
Integrated content for research initiatives, campaigns, live events, and futures-focused digital programming.
Director of Digital Programming, Executive Producer
Digital-first science and technology programming within a portfolio reaching 4.4B annual video views. Helped launch Discovery VR.
Digital Strategist
Multilingual digital campaigns and films around major humanitarian and policy priorities for global audiences.
Executive Producer
Internet-native video programming, including the original Know Your Meme series.
Agroforestry Extension Agent
Worked with farming communities in rural Senegal on agroforestry and sustainable land use, and won a Gender Equity Project Grant in 2007.
Selected WorkFilms · Series · XR
The Great DictatorSXSW
Their words. Your voice. Your moment. Step up to the podium to perform one of history's great speeches while AI audiences react to your delivery in real time, then receive a personal film with the full speech in your own cloned voice. Covered by Fast Company.
playing god? Season 2
A podcast on the ethical questions raised by new science, medicine, and technology. Led Season 2's launch: audience positioning, messaging, and multi-channel campaigns.
Outside Insights
A consumer behavior researcher explains the research behind everyday moments, from the power of defaults to the small ways people feel seen or invisible.
Stronghold Pay
A batch-shot weekly content engine for a fintech brand that doubled the channel in six months, past 100K subscribers.
XR Learning HubAR
Real people captured in volumetric video and placed into augmented and mixed-reality scenes, giving nursing students lifelike clinical scenarios to train with.
Whose Future?
Workshops and courses in generative AI, game engines, and immersive storytelling, reaching 5,000+ learners in California, North Carolina, and New York.
Choose Your Own Resistance
An interactive drama from Columbia's School of Social Work in which viewers decide how to respond to everyday racism.
PARADISESXSW
An AI-driven audio experience that guides couples through a 30-minute story about relationship dynamics and intimate partner violence.
The State of Global PeaceSundance
You play a head of state preparing to address the U.N. General Assembly when students hack your headset to show you the data behind inequality, militarization, and climate change.
Glowforge: Create Your World
A brand campaign built around the makers who use Glowforge's laser printer to design and sell their own work.
My Hidden City
A portrait of Mrauk U, the ancient temple city in Myanmar's Rakhine State.
The UN: Innovating for Peace
The history and future of innovation at the United Nations, and what new technology could mean for its peace work.
The Wayfinder
Filmed at sea aboard a traditional Hawaiian voyaging canoe.
These Sleepless NightsVenice
An immersive look at New York's housing crisis through the tenants and activists fighting eviction.
Futures Thinking
Institute for the Future's forecasting methods, taught as an online specialization for anyone who wants to think like a futurist.
New Realities of Learning
How VR and AR are changing education and workforce training.
XPrize: Getting to the Bottom of Our Ocean
Takes viewers into the deep sea for the Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE, a global competition to map the ocean floor.
Discovery TRVLR
Part of Discovery's immersive travel series, putting viewers on the ice in Antarctica.
Phone of the Wind
Built around the disconnected phone booth in Otsuchi, Japan, where people who lost loved ones in the 2011 tsunami go to speak with them.
Salary Negotiation Simulator
A VR training where women practice asking for a raise, built to help close the gender pay gap.
My Mother's WingTribeca
A mother in Gaza carries on after losing two of her sons in the 2014 war.
Ground Beneath Her
A young woman in Nepal rebuilds her life after the 2015 earthquake.
Light Up Epilepsy
A portrait of Howard, a legal consultant living with epilepsy.
Special Portals
Live video links that brought stories from the field to world leaders during the U.N. General Assembly, including U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power's conversation with Sidra at Za'atari refugee camp.
The Letter
Follows Shaka Senghor from the Detroit corner where he was shot through 19 years in prison, seven of them in solitary.
Discovery VR
Launched Discovery's VR app and first slate of 360 films, bringing flagship franchises like MythBusters and Shark Week into VR.
What's It Like to Hear Colors?
Puts viewers inside synesthesia, where sounds are experienced as color.
Shots of Awe with Jason Silva
Fast-cut monologues on big ideas, built to make philosophy feel as shareable as a music video.
DNews
Quick, host-led explainers on the science behind the day's headlines.
Clouds Over SidraSheffield
Follows 12-year-old Sidra through daily life in Jordan's Za'atari refugee camp. Premiered at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Hard Science
Hands-on experiments that put everyday science to the test.
Africa Is Rising
Follows Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's MDG Advocacy Group on a visit to Africa, pushing to accelerate progress for women and girls.
Keep the Oil in the Ground
A short advocacy film against new oil drilling that spread quickly online.
Thank You Mom
A Mother's Day short of New Yorkers on the street thanking their moms. A Vimeo Staff Pick.
Know Your Meme
Tracked down the origins of internet memes, treating viral culture with a researcher's seriousness.
Awards& Recognition
Teaching& Talks
- Peabody Awards · Panel Judge
- Johns Hopkins University · Research FellowImmersive Storytelling & Emerging Technologies (ISET) program
- Johns Hopkins University · Guest LecturerAfter Life: Shared Memories, 2024 · Immersive Media Conference, 2018–21
- Politecnico di Milano · Guest LecturerImmersive Media for Social Change, 2023
- Columbia University School of Social Work · Adjunct ProfessorStorytelling for Social Justice, 2023 · ▶ Watch the experience walkthrough
- ISTE · Featured SpeakerISTEverse, 2023
- TEDxYouth@Fitzrovia · SpeakerVirtuous Reality: The Power of Being There, 2022 · ▶ Watch
- Duke University · Guest LecturerEmerging Media, 2021
- Games for Change Summit · PanelistDesigning VR with Incarcerated and Returning Citizens, 2020
- Emerson College Los Angeles · Guest LecturerImmersive Storytelling, 2018
- Binghamton University · Practitioner in ResidenceInstitute for Genocide and Atrocity Prevention, 2018
- Stanford University · Guest LecturerVR for Behavior Change, 2017
- Sundance Film Festival · PanelistOculus VR for Good, 2017
- Vivid Sydney · SpeakerVirtual Reality for Real-World Change, 2016–17
- World Economic Forum · PresenterHTC's VR for Impact, 2016
- SXSW · PanelistOculus VR for Good, 2016
- U.N. General Assembly · PresenterU.N.V.R., 2015–17
- YouTube for Good Summit · PresenterSocial Impact Virality, 2015
- VidCon · Fireside ChatVR for Storytelling, 2015
- Emerson College · B.A., Visual Media2002–2006 · Young Alumni Achievement Award, 2017