Ryan Schmaltz is the Director of Edgeworks. He brings two decades of combined experience in the private sector and public sector in emerging technology strategy, business, operations, and partnerships.  

Ryan has been working in emerging technology since 2014. He has pioneered entrepreneurial ventures, industry-academic programs, and sponsored and applied research across various sectors including entertainment, health sciences, and arts and humanities.  

Most recently, Ryan was the founding Director of the Media and Emerging Technology Lab (METL) at UNC School of the Arts. During his tenure, Ryan secured over $1M in funding from: Epic Games (MegaGrant) and other corporate sponsors, the North Carolina State Legislature, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), and the Small Business Association to advance research, residencies, and content production programs. His work led to the creation of the VR Nursing Program, which revolutionizes nursing education and helps address the national nursing shortage.  

Ryan's passion is developing and deploying solutions and experiences at the threshold of physical and digital. Ryan led projects for the San Francisco Exploratorium, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030; he cofounded Block Party: Bodega, a hyper-psychedelic open world game, co-created Casa Daga, an immersive theater concept based on the Tarot and aesthetic of Dia de los Muertos, and he has served as Executive Producer on several virtual reality films including 'The Cost of Admission' in collaboration with Fidelity Investments as well the critically acclaimed neo-noir thriller 'Black Ice', which premiered at the 2022 South-by-Southwest Film Festival.  

Previously, Ryan was Executive Vice President at Blippar, a leading augmented reality and machine learning startup. He was among the first 250 employees of Uber Technologies, Inc. where he led strategic growth and scale-up initiatives. He began his career designing, implementing and overseeing intellectual property and licensing programs at Deloitte, Adobe and Microsoft.  

Ryan's work has been featured in Variety, Tech Crunch, Kent Bye's Voices of VR Podcast, among others. Ryan received his Master of Business Administration from Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, a bachelor's in Management Information Systems and Supply Chain Management from California State University, Chico.