With all the hoopla around AI – and for my own amusement – I fed my resume into a conversational generative AI chatbot with the question “who am I and what do I do”. And this was regurgitated back: Diana Williams is a Story Weaver, Venture Alchemist, and Future of Entertainment Architect. And her superpowers go even further beyond lightsabers and headsets. Diana’s a champion of diverse voices, a fierce advocate for under-represented storytellers, and a relentless optimist about the transformative power of narrative. She’s built and scaled businesses, earned awards, and disrupted the status quo with every project. Diana’s mission is clear: to build bridges between the business and creative worlds, ensuring that every story has the chance to shine. She mentors aspiring creators, reminding them that their dreams are not just possible, they’re inevitable with the right engine.
When “weaver”, “alchemist” and “architect” are in the same paragraph, this is a sign to step away from the AI.
So below are my biographical facts as I know them, reconfirmed via web2.0 technology, and delivered in 3rd person prose:
With a 30+ year career that has moved fluidly between on-set production and executive suites, indie scrappiness and studio big budgets, traditional legacy media and digital disruption, low tech foundational basics and high tech moonshots, Diana Williams has learned a thing or two or more about entertainment as an industry. This led she and Dario Di Zanni to co-found Kinetic Energy Entertainment on the principle that creative is a business, the fundamental truth that one needs the other to survive, and the acknowledgement that each deserves a level of respect so that they work together to the benefit of each other.
As the CEO & Co-founder of Kinetic Energy Entertainment, Diana believes in the power of story with unique and interesting points-of-views told in a variety of ways that push and innovate with technology. Throughout her wide-ranging career, from development to production to distribution, she has been at the forefront of working with emerging and established talent to ensure a diversity of talents can reach audiences and grow them into engaged communities in an ever-evolving industry.
Prior to Kinetic, Diana was the Creative Development and Franchise Producer for Star Wars at Lucasfilm, where she developed film and tv (including Star Wars Rebels, Rogue One), mobile and console videogames (including 2015’s Battlefront), and publishing (Marvel’s Star Wars comics and novel expansions). While at Lucasfilm she helped launch ILMxLAB, an immersive entertainment and VR/AR/mixed reality lab, with projects including Vader Immortal (writer: David Goyer), Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire, and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Academy Award© winning VR experience Carne y Arena. Diana has also worked with BET Networks as a production consultant on TV and made-for-cable movies including Let the Church Say Amen (director: Regina King).
Diana produced the critically acclaimed feature film Our Song, which earned her a nomination for an Independent Spirit Award in the Producer category. Other credits include documentaries Room 237, the Emmy© award-winning Sylvia Drew Ivie, Student Academy Award©-nominated Another First Step, Industrial Light & Magic: Creating the Impossible, Method to the Madness of Jerry Lewis, and Dear Mom Love Cher.
Previously serving as the Chair of the Interactive Board of Jurors for digital and immersive storytelling for the Peabody Award, Diana is also on the Strategic Planning Committee of The National Academy of Sciences’ Science and Entertainment Exchange; the advisory committee for the Royal Shakespeare Company/Digital development; the advisory board for UK-based Future of Film; and the boards of Diverso (a non-profit organization by students for students, dedicated to empowering the under-represented storytellers of the next generation), The Overlook Film Festival (celebration of all things horror held in New Orleans), and The Immersive Experience Institute for interactive and immersive events, theater, and creators. A member of the Directors Guild of America (DGA) and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), and a proud #JerseyGirl, Diana began her career as an Assistant Director after graduating from Georgetown University.
PS: Also a big fan of frenchfries.
PPS: STEM enthusiast.
PPPS: No AI was harmed in the failed experiment of writing a blurb-y bio.
