“When COVID cancelled every prestigious program in 2020, T. Howard Foundation placed me at Hearst Magazines — and it changed everything. What started as an internship became three years as an employee, with bylines in ELLE and Harper’s BAZAAR and video work at Cosmopolitan. That foundation took me to Snapchat and eventually my own company. Forever grateful.”
Anatola Araba is a Forbes 30 Under 30 futurist, award-winning filmmaker, and founder of Reimagine Story Lab, working at the intersection of imagination, technology, and culture.
She has spoken four times at the United Nations, and has spoken at Afrotech, Infosys, and leading universities globally. Her films and multimedia creations have been exhibited at the MoMA and she made history when her art was sent to space on NASA’s first Moon mission since 1972.
Raised in New York City, Anatola earned a BFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts and an MFA in Art and Technology from CalArts. She is currently a Visiting Professor of Interactive Media and Game Design at Pratt Institute.
She has partnered with the likes of Snapchat, Google, and Mozilla to tell innovative stories. Her writing has been published in ELLE and Harper’s Bazaar. Her work has been featured in Vogue and the Wall Street Journal.
At the core of her work is a simple belief: imagination is infrastructure. And the futures we live in will be shaped by those who imagine them.