About Gabo Arora
Gabo Arora is Founder and Creative Director of Lightshed (thisislightshed.org), a virtual reality and social impact start-up; Creative Advisor for immersive storytelling / VR for the UN; and an award-winning filmmaker represented by Within/Here Be Dragons. His work focuses on new technologies that promote social causes and make decision-making processes more inclusive. Among these projects is a viral video campaign for the recent climate change summit in Paris, and various collaborations with internet influencers to promote accountability on global humanitarian aid assistance. He is also founder of UNVR.org and has directed and produced a series of pioneering, and widely acclaimed, virtual reality documentaries focusing on vulnerable populations in crisis.
Clouds Over Sidra, Waves of Grace and My Mother’s Wing have all premiered at major film festivals around the world, including Cannes, Sundance and Tribeca, featured at the World Economic Forum in Davos, screened at the White House, and have exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art’s inaugural program on immersive storytelling.
A native New Yorker, Gabo also holds honors degrees with distinction from NYU and Johns Hopkins University. He is a 2016 World Economic Forum Arts and Cultural leader at Davos and was nominated for a term-membership at the Council on Foreign Relations in 2013 by Francis Fukuyama. His work as been nominated for an Emmy, awarded a Cannes Lions, a Sheffield Doc/Fest award for best documentary and has been featured in the New Yorker, the British Film Institute’s Sight and Sound magazine, Fast Company, New York Times and covered widely in the Guardian, Vice News, Wired, TED, NPR and PBS Newshour.
Gabo was also second-unit director on U2’s first-ever VR music video, “Song for Someone”, and has upcoming projects in a variety of genres, including narrative and science fiction, all with the aim to further his expertise and understanding on the grammar of this new medium.