Ariel Hauter Executive Director

Ariel has been the Executive Director of The Hollywood Hill since co-founding it in 2004, leading strategy, business development, and programming. He also leads the media projects division which launched in 2009. Prior to co-founding and heading up The Hollywood Hill, Ariel worked at United Talent Agency (UTA), one of the premier Hollywood talent agencies, where he trained under the co-head of the motion picture literary department and assisted in the representation of more than a dozen A-list directors such as Chris Nolan (Inception, The Dark Knight, Batman Begins), and Tom Shadyac (Ace Ventura, Bruce Almighty, Liar Liar, The Nutty Professor). Prior to that position, he trained under other top agents in the motion picture literary and indy film packaging division, assisting in the representation of dozens of A-list writers, directors, actors, and producers including Alan Ball (writer of American Beauty, creator of Six Feet Under and True Blood) and Jeff Nathanson (Catch Me If You Can, Rush Hour 2). Before moving to Los Angeles, he worked as an e-commerce specialist at Internet venture capital firm CMGi, moving on to assist in the expansion of the Experience Design division of Internet consulting firm Zefer, Inc. in Boston. Preceding his work in the Internet, he was co-owner of a product design & consulting firm, Tiles & Christiansen, Ltd., managing clients such as Barney's NY, Four Seasons Hotels and Donna Karan Home Fashions. He attended Clark University where he studied International Economies, and attended high school at North Carolina School of the Arts (at North Carolina University) where he trained as a ballet dancer under the direction of Duncan Noble of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo.

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Ori Neidich Chief Technology Officer

With nearly two decades of experience at the intersection of media & technology, I care deeply about creating next-generation products based on the emerging trends that are shaking up the world of storytelling. I’m an experienced technologist in digital media, traditional media, transmedia and 3D. My clients are the CEOs, CTOs, and the leaders of Engineering product teams, working within funded startups and major corporations, U.S. and international. My initial work drives my clients’ products to rapid iteration and excellent product/market fit, while controlling costs. My ongoing strategies direct my clients and their teams to develop, deploy and refine cutting edge products and campaigns in response to changing market conditions. My 17 years of engineering and media background, including 10 years with such companies as DreamWorks and Digital Domain, enables me to guide my clients through the constantly shifting landscape that is the world of digital media, including apps, mobile, geo & online video. Beyond my direct client work, I offer strategies to such organizations as the Palo Alto Research Center (Xerox PARC), the government of Colombia, and various international companies (particularly to Israeli companies in their market entry to the U.S.).

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Founding Advisory Board

Lawrence Bender  Producer/Partner, A Band Apart

Mark Canton  Chairman/CEO, Atmosphere Entertainment

Victoria Hopper  Political Consultant

Arianna Huffington  President & Editor-In-Chief, The Huffington Post Media Group

Mike Medavoy  Chairman/CEO, Phoenix Pictures

Larry Winokur  Co-Founder/CEO, BWR Public Relations

Strategic Advisors

Callie Khouri  Writer/Director

Scott Ross  Digital Entertainment Pioneer; Founder & Former Chairman/CEO, Digital Domain

Documentary Project Advisors

Lawrence Bender  Film Producer

Scott Z. Burns  Film Writer/Director/Producer

Nadia Conners  Film Writer/Director

Science & Technology Advisors

Francis Arnold  Founder, Gevo; Dickinson Professor of Chemical Engineering and Biochemistry, CALTECH

Philip Coyle  Senior Advisor, Center for Defense Information

Andrew Hessel  Genomic Futurist

David Howe  CEO, Civitas Group

Alex Steffen, Co-Founder, WorldChanging.com

Jonathan Zittrain  Co-Founder, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard; Chair, Internet Governance, Oxford

Ethan Zuckerman  Fellow, Berkman Center, Harvard

Games-For-Change Advisors

Susan Bonds  CEO, 42 Entertainment

Doug Church  Independent Game Producer

Mark DeLoura  Game Technology Consultant

Dave Durnil  Director & GM, Adv. Content and Gaming at Qualcomm

Robin Hunicke  Co-Founder, Funomena

Stone Librande  Creative Director, Maxis (EA); Lead Designer, Spore

Adam Sussman  SVP, DIMG Games Publishing at The Walt Disney Company

Our Past 2004-2010

Founded in 2004, The Hollywood Hill provides its entertainment industry members with both speaker-driven educational events and tools that support them in the production of social issue media content.

Our primary focus is supporting innovators in science and technology. We're entering a new century defined by rapid and exponential breakthroughs in science and technology that are handing the human race an unprecedented capability to shape the future of the world. The Hollywood Hill tracks the innovators behind these breakthroughs, invites them to present their work to Hollywood, and then provides tools for the entertainment industry to help develop and deploy their projects into the global marketplace, thus maximizing their impact.

Hollywood has a role to play in supporting these innovators. Not only do we have the largest creative community in the entire world, but a world-class business community capable of providing business strategy, legal, marketing, and financial assistance. Hollywood's thousands of top attorneys, agents, managers, and producers, combined with our diverse and ecletic film, television, and music creative talent are a virtual army of social change agents with a global reach.

Our Events & Conferences keep our entertainment industry members informed on key breakthroughs and marketplace trends. In 2008 we expanded into quarterly conferences, with Wired Magazine becoming our Presenting Sponsor and Yahoo our Lead Sponsor. From there our momentum continued leading us into the launch of our projects division. In addition to science and technology, we host entertainment industry workshops discussing trends within the industry, with particular focus on the impact of technology innovations. And we also publish a Daily Intelligence Report by email keeping members up-to-speed on marketplace innovations on a daily basis.

Our Future 2011-Today

In 2011 we made a strategic decision to expand our base in New York City and regroup our projects. The founders have been channeling a majority of their resources into some new social change internet start-ups as well as heading up the Play4Change Lab, which is now embarking on a new health NSF-funded video-game project in partnership with the University of California, Davis, School of Education & Foods for Health Institute. We'll be sending out updates on these projects in the coming months.

The Future of Hollywood Activism

A new generation of Hollywood activists is taking over.

The world is now small and flat. And with new technologies, sciences, and the Internet, these world-renowned creators and powerbrokers are exercising their muscle to truly change the world. Considering the current threats against humanity, it's not a minute too soon.

Hollywood is in transition. It has entered the digital age. Hollywood's social leaders of the last 40 years are now all over 60, with some in their 80s and 90s. Six decades of younger professionals sit below them, succeeding in a corporate and digital world, wary of inheriting the social baggage of the radical "Hollywood Liberal", but extremely motivated to affect change. They number in the thousands and their power is at its peak as a group rather than as individuals. They are looking for the corporate version of marching down the streets. And they are needing an organization that can take advantage of the digital world's new technologies, sciences, and information to truly change the world. Welcome to the answer.

Technology and science are changing our world in ways we could have never imagined. Technology provides us unprecedented capability, and with that capability comes extraordinary responsibility. We live in a world of human cloning, biodegradable plastic, and ubiquitous instant communication.

The tools available to effect change are evolving at an ever-increasing rate. Today, there is a genetically-modified bacterium that eats sewage and emits fuel-grade hydrogen, a tiny machine that converts cow manure into energy to charge batteries, and open-source translation software that enables Swahili-speakers to use Microsoft office. Every day brings with it hundreds of innovations from around the globe.

Our ability to communicate and share information has also changed. Whether its email, instant messaging, worldwide video-conferencing, RSS feeds, podcasting, video-on-demand, or satellite TV and radio, we can be ubiquitously connected. It's only a matter of time until pervasive computing is realized and information is continuously available unrestrained and unwired.

In short, the agrarian age yielded to the industrial age, which now has been replaced by the information age. We've shifted paradigms and tangible inventory is replaced with intangible assets. With the digital economy upon the rate of exchange, the rate of change, and the power of impact shift the paradigm making Star Trek like imaginations commercial and social realities. The new century brings with it tremendous threats and tremendous gains, mostly all human-made. But with it, our ability to affect change has exploded, and not a moment too soon.

The threats we, as societies, face require high-impact, large-scale solutions. Mini-Nukes, Avian Flu, Bio-Weapons, Human Engineering, Global Warming, and a Global Energy Security are just a few of the most obvious dangers threatening to wreak devastation of holocaustic proportions. This is complicated by widespread global poverty and disease, a war of civilizations, ocean pollution, totalitarian regimes, cyber-terrorism, and the threat of a global financial disaster, and it's not a pretty picture.

 

But it is a picture we can improve. In this shifting world, the entertainment industry in general, and Hollywood in particular has become one of the most powerful social influences. Hollywood has one of the largest creative communities capable of reaching the billions of individuals daily. Hollywood has matured into a business savvy industrial complex complete with large financial resources, tremendous influence, and yet a strong sense of social responsibility. Combine all of these characteristics, and one has a high-powered catalyst for change.

The entertainment industry, and again, Hollywood in particular, has a charter to entertain and to provoke the imagination, raise awareness, present controversy, catalyze reflection, thought, and discussion, and in so doing, Hollywood has come to recognize that it has the responsibility to advocate and catalyze global responsibility. Like the free press but packaged in a manner to achieve its charter, Hollywood has the capacity to be a catalyst for social change. And we've witnessed ad-hoc efforts over the years. Now, the power of a digital economy presents an opportunity for a more orchestrated effort. To be effective in this new order, Hollywood needs a new organization. Its requires a sophisticated, highly-efficient adaptable infrastructure that can leverage thousands of Hollywood's skilled professionals, raise their awareness of issues, and organize initiatives and projects managed and completed by professional managers. What Hollywood needs is a combination of a think-tank, an event facility, a media production studio, a technology innovation lab, and a multi-pronged fundraising operation to provide the kind of self-sustaining social change machine to achieve the desires of Hollywood to effect global responsibility.

Sounds like a bit much? Not as much as you might believe. We've spent two years designing it, and now we're building it.

We recognize that Hollywood's professionals are very smart creatives and are used to juggling multiple projects at any given time. It is not abnormal then that they would approach social activism in the same way. Multiple interests lead to multiple issues, which lead to multiple projects. Therefore, rather than choosing long-term projects that take years to achieve results, The Hollywood Hill focuses on being the tipping point or catalyst for causes. Issues are selected, problems are analyzed, and solutions are crafted based on shorter-term goals that can have a tipping point effect. The organization's members can maximize their impact by harnessing their immense resources and having a laser-like focus that pushes causes onto higher ground.

Such an ambitious project is not for the faint of heart. It's for those who understand the days of Save The Whales are over. Affecting change in a global community controlled by many far-reaching power centers requires having a solid foundation, a self-sustaining model, and serious talent and resources. It also requires a new mode of thinking... a hybrid approach, based on proven techniques, but adapted to a new marketplace with new tools.