Feyisayo Enuiyin welcomes Maria Villar, an inspiring figure in the tech world, to the WIT Love podcast. The conversation centers around the significant role women play in technology, as well as the challenges and triumphs that come with carving out a niche in this male-dominated field. Maria shares her journey from being a young electrical engineering graduate to becoming the founder and CEO of Immersive Studios, a company dedicated to leveraging immersive technologies to create impactful experiences in various industries. Throughout their discussion, Maria emphasizes the importance of mentorship, sharing her commitment to guiding young people interested in technology, particularly women, and how her diverse cultural background—being Portuguese with Angolan roots—has shaped her approach to leadership and community engagement.

The dialogue also delves into the intricacies of immersive technologies such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR). Maria articulates the distinctions between these technologies and their applications, illustrating how they can revolutionize sectors like education and healthcare. She highlights the potential for VR and AR to create new learning environments, making education more accessible and engaging. The episode provides listeners with insights into the future of technology and the importance of inclusivity in the tech landscape, stressing that innovation should reach underserved communities to ensure equitable access to advancements in technology.

Feyi and Maria’s exchange is not just a celebration of achievements but also a call to action for aspiring technologists to embrace their journeys and leverage their unique backgrounds in pursuit of their goals.

Takeaways:

• Women in technology are rising, and mentorship plays a crucial role in this movement.
• Maria Villar emphasizes the importance of cultural diversity in shaping personal and professional identities.
• The immersive technology industry is evolving, with virtual and augmented reality leading the way.
• Maria's journey shows how persistence and a willingness to learn can lead to success.
• Building a supportive community is essential for women founders facing industry challenges.
• Investing in underserved communities with technology can drive significant positive change globally.

Find them online:

Feyisayo Enuiyin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/feyisayoenuiyin/

Maria Vilar: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariainesvilar/

Find us on Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/witlovepodcast/

Welcome to whitlove, a podcast founded by women, produced by women, about women in technology.

There is a huge place for women in tech, and this podcast is going to get well into the work as a leading contributor to help change the trajectory and see the rise of women in technology.

Sit back and enjoy as our young female hosts share energy with experienced professional women in technology.

Hello.

Hello, hello, everyone.

Welcome to the With Love podcast, a podcast that is connecting young hosts like me to professional women in tech, where they'll get to share wisdom and learn about each other in the process.

My name is Faye Shayo Inuyan, but if you're listening, you can call me Faye or you can call me Fabulous.

I'm an engineering graduate from McMaster University, passionate about technology, community and leadership.

And with me today, I have a woman who embodies all that and even more.

Please welcome Maria Villar.

Thank you, thank you.

Thank you for inviting me.

I love your enthusiasm.

Thank you very much.

Maria Villar is an electrical engineer and the founder and CEO of Immersive Studios, a company dedicated to creating impactful immersive experiences that empower industries with solutions like virtual training and innovative brand activations.

She's also serves as the Portuguese representative and board member of Euro Immersive and the European Federation of XR Professionals.

She enjoys speaking at technology events and sharing knowledge she has acquired so far.

Maria has been a mentor to other startups and young people who want to enter technology areas and create their project, which she believes is aligned with her purpose of contributing positively to society through technology.

Wow.

I love that bio.

I love everything about it from you studying electrical engineering, being a founder in such a niche space, we're going to get into that real soon.

But before we dive into all the amazing things that you are, Maria, I always like to ask people these questions.

I like to, you know, I like the career talk, but I also like the personal talk.

I like the fun personal talk.

And I want to ask you, what is your favorite food to eat?

I'm.

I've been feeling very foodie this past few weeks.

I've been in my food.

Oh, I don't know if you.

Well, you're.

You don't know it, but after.

After this podcast, you're going to Google it.

Okay.

It's a Portuguese dish.

It's called Cuzidu Apt.

It's basically a stew with meat and vegetables.

It's very typical here in Portugal.

And I can tell.

I can already tell you the second favorite food.

It's MBA from.

From Angola.

My father is from Angola.

And I absolutely love muamba, so.

Okay, okay.

Go Google it.

Okay, I'm gonna Google those two.

No, what?

You said meat.

You said veggies.

All in a.

I love a good stew.

Like, let me just be honest with you.

I love it.

I think that's what I was probably eating that before this meeting was eating some vegetable stew.

So I love a good stew.

So I'm really excited to check that out.

And maybe I'm gonna put a Portuguese restaurant in my next restaurante visit.

Maybe I'll let you know.

Thank you for sharing that with us.

No, I love that you have.

You know this.

I didn't even know that.

So your background is, like, Portuguese and also Angolan?

Yeah, my father is from Angolan.

My mother is Portuguese.

Oh, wow.

I love that.

And how do you.

How would you say having those.

I want to say very.

Maybe not so very.

Actually not, I think about it, but different backgrounds.

How do you think that has shaped the person that, you know is on this podcast today?

Would you say having those two different cultures, you know, shaped your career, Pat.

Shape who you are personally?

Like, what role do you think it has played in who you are as an individual?

Well, I feel like Angola, especially African countries, they have a very.

They tend to focus a lot on the family.

And we in my.

In my family, we just love gatherings and good food like mwamba.

So I feel that's.

That's my African side.

Yeah.

And, yes.

And with the Portuguese side, I guess we're just so.

I think we just.

We just try to.

We're very welcoming.

We just try everyone to feel really good.

So I think it's a mix of very good.

Two different worlds.

But it just shaped me in the way that I try to treat everyone with the same respect because, of course, having these different backgrounds and my family, while my father and mother, they live very different backgrounds, especially my father, to growing up in Angola and then coming to Portugal to.

To live here.

So I'm just very aware of different contexts that people can.

Can have, and it's just not.

Not because that you're in a situation today that tomorrow you cannot achieve other things.

So I'm just.

I try to give my time with everyone that needs or asks, and that's why I love mentorship so much, especially with young people that really want to enter tech areas and that they say sometimes that I'm a role model.

So I'm just really pleased about it.

Yeah.

No, that's amazing.

That's amazing.

The fact that having those two backgrounds has really shaped you to be.

I think I want to call it a servant leadership approach.

I would say that you have where it's all about serving others.

And I can see that coming into hand.

Being a founder, you know, of Immersive Studios.

Can you tell us a bit, you know, a bit more about that?

What brought you to that journey?

Because I.

I know that you studied electrical engineering.

Was it from electrical engineering, Was that discovery into the niche of AR VR?

Was it like another pathway you.

You took to get to where you are today with Immersive Studio?

What was that pipeline for you?

Because again, I.

I want to learn about that.

I also want to learn about your approach.

Been able to lead an organization that is doing something so unique and creating, you know, an impact in the world.

Maybe an impact that the entire world hasn't known yet, but the entire world will get to know.

So what has that been like for you?

Absolutely.

And just one more thing that I want to say is that I know that today I'm a founder and also an engineer because my father made the decision of coming to Europe.

So I'm very aware of the privilege that I have.

If he didn't make that decision when he was young, I wouldn't be here talking to you.

So I'm just very aware of the privilege I have.

Growing up in Portugal, we have, well, lots of problems with the government and other situations, but it still is a very privileged country to live in.

So I'm very aware of it.

I studied electrical engineer because I just love computers.

So since I was a young kid, I just loved technology.

It's just.

It was amazing for me.

I just love everything that had to do with computers.

And I started.

I went to college and then I did my major.

So in my masters, we have a major in the minor.

I did my major in systems decision and control, which is basically robotics and AI.

So it's very.

Yeah, it's tech world.

And I did a minor in telecommunications.

And from that, when I had my.

When I had my education finished, let's say when I decided that it was time to stop, I felt it was.

I really had the opportunity to create something.

It wasn't immediate.

I took almost six months to open my own company because I didn't have the money.

I had the privilege, but I didn't have the money.

My parents didn't have the money to give it to me.

So I can open my own company.

And there's a lot of bureaucracy and money that you need to spend to even open your own company.

Yeah.

So I work as a researcher of my college doing AI algorithms and I was applying them to drones.

So again, very, very technical.

And when the scholarship and that's.

I started, I thought of starting my own company.

So I took six months and I was just doing the things that I could to survive, basically.

So tutoring.

I tried to do lots of tutoring in maths and physics because that was basically my skills.

Yeah.

For six months I landed my first clients and suddenly I had the money to open my own company and pay the bills.

And then I was just so hustling so hard that after that clients, I had the second client and I had a third one.

And then I'm here to count the story.

Yeah.

Wow.

So it went from getting the electrical engineering degree going, okay, this is great.

I want to do something.

Not necessarily know how you'll get there, but just doing what you could in the moment of things.

And then after six months, something clicked.

And when that something click, you took that wave and you just wrote it all the way to the top.

And, you know, that's what brings you here today.

So that I'm assuming that's that business you're talking about is Immersive Studio.

It's the birth of it.

So.

Yeah, it wasn't, I can tell you.

Yeah.

Oh, was it?

Oh, wow.

Okay.

Okay.

So what was that?

What was that business?

Because I want to learn, I want to learn from that to Immersive Studio.

So you went from that business to getting your first client your second and going from there.

And then how did Investors Studio come about?

So when I was studying, I work as a freelancer because again, I needed the money.

So I worked as a freelancer developing games for brands.

Yeah.

And.

And when I started developing games in this area called brand activation inside the event.

So it was basically the actions that the brands wanted to develop to interact with the clients.

So that would be first decided being simpler games like a quiz or maybe like a simple digital game.

But then one time a client asked me a VR game, so with virtual reality, and I was like, well, I have no idea how to do this, but I never say no.

There's one thing about me.

If you KNEW MARIA From 10 years ago, I never say no.

If the client asked me, do you know how to do this?

Do you know how to develop this?

I would say, absolutely, you know, absolutely.

And then I got home and I was like, oh my God, how am I going to do this?

Yeah, I love it, I love it.

But the answer was always yes, yes, yes, I can do It.

Yeah.

And there were two reasons for that.

First of all, I was broke, so I had to do something.

If I had the opportunity, I would do it.

Absolutely, I would do it.

And second of all, I just wanted to learn and to find out, okay, let's try and see if this is my own path or if I can get an opportunity here.

So I was just so eager to start something that would say yes to absolutely everything that the clients ask if I can do it.

So at first, I actually started.

I created my company.

It's called Digital Thunder.

We worked a lot, so we develop websites and we develop applications for these brands I already had the contact with.

And then after a year, I had that.

They asked me to do a VR game, and I started entering Immersive Technologies.

And I realized there was no one doing this for brand activation, especially here in Portugal.

And I was like, maybe this is an opportunity I can take.

Wow.

But it was very organic.

And when I started Immersive Studios, after a year of opening the company, when I pivot to Immersive Studios, I actually already had a bit of knowledge on how to manage the process with the client, so it was much easier.

Okay, well, I had a year of experience, but still.

Oh, okay.

No, no, no, no.

I think any experience is good.

And I'm really.

I really love the fact that it's almost like all those job and the work that you've done prior to Immersive Studios, when it was timing, you know, you got that idea to go.

A lot of that came with you, you know, a lot of those skills that you already.

Whether it's the hard skill or the soft skills, I'm sure dealing with clients, managing, all of that, I'm sure that came with you, you know, on the journey of Immersive Studios.

So I want to know something, because you went from saying, yeah, I am.

I can do VR, I can do it.

Had no idea, you know, what really was going on in that field.

Yeah.

And now you have an entire organization on that fundamental.

Like, what did you learn?

Like, what did you.

If you believe it, you can do it, Right.

I love it.

Like, what did you.

Was there something you learned?

Was there a course you took?

Was there you watched?

I'm always, I believe, in YouTube University.

Yeah, I'm all for that.

Yeah.

So was that.

Was that your journey?

Like.

Like, how.

What was that learning like, then?

Was it.

Was it.

You went in and did a deep dive, you know, read a research paper, and VR was like, oh, I'm obsessed with this.

I love it.

Let's do it.

Tell me, like, tell us what, what happened there.

So, disclaimer.

I was already programming, so of course I had coding skills.

And with VR you need to have coding skills.

So we code in a specific language called C Sharp.

So I already knew more or less how to program it in language.

The tricky part was the interfaces, the environments, the 3D models.

It was lots and lots of things.

And if today we don't have every resource online about VR, you can imagine three years ago, like, we didn't have it.

We don't have.

I didn't.

I didn't know what to do.

Wow.

But I say yes and I'm very.

Once I say yes, I'm going to go until the end of the world to.

I'm not going to let you down.

You can be sure I'm not going to let you down.

So I was like, no, I need to do this.

This is going to happen.

So I did my research.

I.

Well, I went to the library because again, I didn't have lots of money from, for, for books, but I went to the library and I was just reading all the books that I could about it, about the language part and also the interfaces.

I went to YouTube University, so I was just googling everything that I could.

We didn't have chatgpt at the time, but I was just trying to get all the resources from.

That's my first step.

Let's go and chat.

Break it down for me.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

But I just.

Well, once I say yes, I'll do absolutely everything to just please the client in the sense that I want to give you the best final product.

So I believed and I talked with everyone that I thought that could help me and I think I read every research, I watched every video and then I just started to matching the pieces and I did my best.

I can tell it wasn't my best work now that I have Immersive Studios as a company, but it was OK.

Then it was your best for.

Then it was your best because you put it all into it.

Start somewhere, right?

No, you always.

And I love that.

I love that about you.

One that it was the commitment to.

I do not know this, but I'm going to figure it out.

I feel like that is something that as someone like myself who's, you know, new into this technology space of things, the commitment to it, but also the passion to go and learn, you know, figure it out.

You know, now you're talking about three years ago now.

There's, you know, a lot of resources out There maybe not all resources, but a lot of things are out there.

And I feel like for anyone listening to this, it's being committed and being passionate enough to go and learn, to go and pursue whatever it is that you know, you've put your mind to or that you have interest in.

So I love that.

And I think there's so much, there's so much that one could.

There's so many things that one could learn from that experience.

And I now want to understand what is VR and what is AR and what is xr.

I watched your.

One of your talks and was it the global startups and Canada?

Yes, yes.

You were breaking it down.

You were talking about and complete disclaimer.

It wasn't until I watched that video of you speaking that I actually understood the difference between all of it.

That's good.

That means I know something.

You did good on that talk because I.

Let's take listening to that and take it notes.

And I'm like, yeah, what is this?

And it wasn't to that talk.

So explain it to the audience listening.

We, you know, you hear AR VR, it's almost.

It reminds you of when people talk about like UX UI and people just use that, but nobody, A lot of times I've noticed people do not actually know the difference.

So you're in about like AR and VR.

And then there's another one I learned from you on that talk, which was xr.

I didn't hear.

Sorry.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So explain it to the audience listening.

What is ar?

What is VR?

What is xr?

And then we'll go from there.

Let's go, let's break it down.

So the industry where we work in immersive studios, it's called extended reality, and XR is short for extended reality.

So if you take an X from extended and an R from reality, you get xr.

Okay.

That's the name of the industry.

Okay.

And then inside xr, we work with three immersive technologies.

VR or virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

So the name of the industry is XR, but the technologies itself, we work with three.

Three.

Okay.

And then break down the AR VR and the Mr.

I think Mr.

Is mixed.

Yes.

So let's break it down.

Let's do it.

So when we talk about virtual reality, we're talking about a world that doesn't exist.

We put on the headsets.

So maybe it's an Apple Vision Pro or it can be a meta quest 2.

For example, you put on the headsets and you're Transported to the world that doesn't exist.

Okay, okay.

With virtual reality, we develop that world.

So we develop a virtual world and we develop everything that's inside the world.

So we're talking most of 3D models and 3D objects.

Okay, okay.

So for example, Bit Saver, it's a very known game that's in VR.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

And then we have augmented reality.

In augmented reality, we superimpose these objects, these virtual objects that we create for both VR and architecture, but we superimpose them in the real world so we can talk about Pokemon Go.

That happens both in the virtual and real way.

And I think the easiest example are the social media filters because we have these virtual elements that we're superimposing, for example, in our own face.

AR is very simple.

So just think about the filters.

Most of the AR experiences are done with.

With the phone.

So you can just do experience with the phone.

Oh, okay.

I love that.

It doesn't imply that you have a headset.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

So AR is you're imposing onto the real world VR.

Everything is completely made up.

That entire world is created and then you have Mr.

Which is, I'm just assuming a mixture of both.

You can do.

Okay, yeah.

So.

So mixed reality, it's the most advanced immersive technology because it's basically augmented reality, but you can actually interact with the objects.

So it's very advanced.

So you can think of, for example, if a doctor is doing a surgery, he can visualize a tumor, or he can interact with an object in real time, or he can, for example, train for a very difficult surgery and he can cut a patient's skin, but in a virtual way, you know?

Okay.

So in my opinion, mixed reality is for very advanced case studies.

Okay.

Otherwise, I don't think most of the situations are very.

We need to apply mixed reality because it's very advanced in terms of programming and also creating the concept for the experience.

Okay.

No, I love.

I love the fact that none of this was like what you studied, but you somehow took one project and went.

In and became expert in my life change.

Yes, I love.

I love it.

I love it.

But you say one thing, right.

It's just because I'm very passionate about it.

I found out that I love.

I absolutely love xr.

That's why I was capable of doing it.

Wow.

I love.

And that's what I was saying about, like, having commitment, but then when you have the passion to it, you pursue it to no matter what extent.

That.

Absolutely.

You're just obsessed and you Just want to.

Just want to learn as much as you can, and you're just excited because it's exciting.

Yeah, I love that.

And where.

And for me, when you said that from there, Immersive Studios was born, and you realized that there wasn't much of this in Portugal.

So it's almost like you're leading a change in Portugal when it comes to extended reality.

So what are the challenges that.

I assume that that probably is very challenging because you're not.

It's almost like you're going on a path that many in Portugal have not gone on yet.

And I can.

I can just imagine that came with its own sets of challenges.

So if you can.

If you can share what that's like, and I want to hear those challenges because I think it translates into.

Just in life in general, in whether it.

You're, you know, you're the.

The black sheep of the family, you're doing something that no one.

Your family has done before, or, you know, you're in tech and you're pursuing a niche that isn't so popular and many do not know about.

There are challenges.

There are challenges to go against the grain and to do what is not usually the norm.

So if you can share what.

The challenges that you faced in that, you know, creating this in Portugal and forging this path, I would love to.

I would love to take some notes on that.

Well, there are the obvious challenges that every woman founder faces.

Well, I'm a.

I'm a woman.

It's obvious.

And that can be a challenge with the clients.

At the beginning, because I was very young, and it was visible that I was very young.

Now I have some wrinkles because.

Because I can.

I can't see any wrinkles from the zoom.

I'm just letting you know that.

But at the beginning, everyone.

Well, everyone could see I was very young.

Almost like.

I think almost like a child in some way.

The African part of my family, we tend to have very good skin.

I think we look younger than we are.

So I think everyone saw me as a kid, and it's very intimidating when you enter a room and there's no woman there, and the only woman that appears looks like a kid or looks like a very young person.

So the challenge first was taken.

People realizing that I had something to say and realizing that I was serious about it.

There was my own business.

I was not a kid.

Just saying, look at this experience.

No, I had.

I had knowledge.

I was eager to do it, and I already had clients, so it wasn't just an idea.

Made out of my head.

So that was challenge one.

Yeah.

And then I grew, I grew up and very quickly because when you're a founder, you just, you tend to have different, I think different versions of yourself.

I feel that everyone, every year people change, but I feel I have a new version now every three months because everything passes so quickly.

I'm always changing ideas about something.

So you grow a lot when you start your own company.

And sometimes it can be a bit of, I think it can be a bit frustrating and also lonely when you're an only founder, but only to today.

And I can say, like, for the past year, I'm very confident of the place that I, that I have in, in this market, in this industry because I managed to get very good mentors and people that also lead me, that they're also very good entrepreneurs, even in other areas that they validate my own company, my own ideas.

So I've, I've, I feel very, I'm very grateful of the people, men and women that lead me and are leading me through this process because even, even when you're an only founder, you can never do it alone.

Yeah.

And besides that, you need to have a very good team.

And today I really feel that I have a good team.

And the challenge itself about the industry, I think it's just educating clients about the importance of these technologies, virtual reality and augmented reality.

Sometimes, especially VR, it seems that we are just mating, just making things up and the technology doesn't really exist, but it's not true.

So we need to show the case studies that we have.

We need to say what I did say, the breakdown that we just did about VR and AR as many times as we need.

So we need to have conversations and share, share, share everything that we do.

The benefits of the technology and people really realizing and clients realizing that immersive technologies, they really can have an impact.

Now that we're shifting, we're working not only with projects, but also with the new products in education.

In education.

We're developing a very innovative product in education.

And now that we're doing it and really finalizing and working on our mvp, I can tell you immersive technologies are just, they're not just the future, they're going to be the present, especially in immersive, in immersive learning.

And I feel that the two areas that are going to be most impact are without adults, health and education.

So no, I love, I love that you say it's going to be impactful in, you know, education, because when you were, when I was speaking on that video.

I watched.

It started to get me thinking because I'm like, oh, you know, I think I thought instantly even of the Ray Ban.

Ray Brown brought out these glasses that as a user, you kind of like, just say something and then you can see whatever I want to.

What restaurants are around me.

And through the glasses you can kind of like see whatever world it's been presented to you.

I think Ray Ban has something a lot like that.

I started to think about how this is great for marketing because I think you talked, you touched on that when he talked about brand activations and how people can.

And how market brands can use that to even sell and like, reach more of the audience.

I think I saw in the UK there was a.

Was it Jack Moon?

There was a fashion designer, and he did that with, like, purses.

I, I started to really just think into all the different industries that extended reality can be in.

And the truth is, prior to watching you speak of that video, when I would hear of it, it kind of sounded very cliche.

It sounded like, oh, this is cool.

Like a game.

There was, there was a, there was a, A distance of not really seeing how it could be applied in every day.

I, I didn't see it to be something that would be used in everyday world.

I, I saw it to just be more of a game.

Like, also one just people just like to play games.

And like, this is for like the, the tech nerds that love to play video games.

Like, what, you know, what is this really?

But the more I thought about it, I started to think about, oh, my dad, like, I can use this to exercise and like to get fit.

Like, there's so many ideas.

Yeah.

And you have so many different case studies.

Yeah.

For example, in, in, as I said, in education or in health, a surgeon can train a very complex surgery in these virtual environments and he doesn't need to harm anyone or try or.

Or just training that body.

As you can imagine, maybe it's not very comfortable to the surgeon.

So we have all these situations that can be addressed with immersive technologies that other technologies can't address.

So I think it's a very interesting area.

And as I said, I feel it's very impactful.

And we say something.

I was just going to connect to things that we talk about.

So we started by talking about, of course, the privilege and the background that I have.

One of the futures that the features that the product we're developing.

Yeah.

Is going to have is that we really want to address.

Not only.

Let's Say not only.

The target is not only Europe or countries, even America.

We want to also address other people, for example, in Africa, in other underserved regions, because we feel that sometimes these technologies are very.

I can.

I don't want to say for privileged people, but at the end of the day, we're very privileged to talk about immersive technologies.

Of course, not anyone, like everyone has access to it.

Yes.

But for example, so besides all the programs and pilot programs that we want to run in Portugal and also in Europe studying, we want to also have the opportunity to other children to have access, for example, to the AR experiences.

So for that, you only need a phone.

And that's what we're working on.

Okay.

Okay.

No, I think targeting underserved community is a beautiful thing to do.

Oftentimes when we look at innovation in the world, underserved communities tend to be left behind when something new and great is going on.

And a lot of times I find that underserved communities are the ones that can actually benefit the most from the innovation that is being pushed.

So I think that's a very noble thing to do to, you know, put, you know, put such a.

What do you call it?

Put such a technology like this into the hands of those who.

Otherwise maybe, yeah, they do have access to it, but oftentimes they get access last.

Did it get access after it's gone to the rest of the world?

We do have, you know, the privilege to get the access first.

So I think it's an amazing thing to do, and I can see it being of great impact in those communities and creating change in changing lives and even changing minds.

I think that's.

I just feel it's.

It's crazy that just because I was born.

Well, I'm just referring Africa because, of course, my.

My father was born in Angola.

And African countries, they have.

There are very rich countries in Africa like Angola.

But the problem with these countries is that they have very, very rich people, even richer that we have.

In European countries, you have the poorest people.

So it's just.

There's a gap that is just so broad that you cannot.

It's almost impossible today to just close that gap.

It's very difficult to do it, and it's just crazy for me.

Well, I was born in Portugal, but maybe if my father didn't come to Portugal, I was going to be born in Angola.

Yeah.

And maybe if I was born there, I didn't have the same opportunities.

Well, I'm sure I wouldn't have the same opportunities that I have Today, and that's crazy.

I was not going to be less intelligent or less capable.

Yeah.

But I didn't have, I wasn't going to get the same opportunities.

And that doesn't make sense.

Yeah, no, no, it's.

You're absolutely right.

You wouldn't get the same opportunities, the same exposure, same resources.

I often think of that as well.

I was, although I was born in Nigeria, my parents came to Canada and my dad always said that when he gave birth to me, he never forced, like, you know, he never looked at me and went, oh, my kid is going to go to university in Canada.

All he thought was, my kid is going to go to, you know, hopefully this university in Nigeria.

And the idea, I mean, when I graduated I got my engineering degree and my dad was like, this is beyond what he imagined could even happen.

And so I think you're absolutely right.

It's not because you're less capable or, you know, you don't have the.

But some of the smartest people that I've met, and I say this in all honesty, some of the smartest, most hard working, ambitious people that I've met come from underserved communities.

You know, I spent a good amount of time in both sides and I can tell you the smartest people really do come from underserved communities.

And so I think you're absolutely right on that.

And I think for me it's just being grateful, right?

Being grateful for what we have and the privilege, but at the same time always thinking about how we can give back.

Because I don't believe, you know, I don't believe we got the privilege just because I think we got the privilege that we can do something with that for good, to better.

Yes.

Don't have it.

So there's always a purpose, you know, as to why we in the positions that we are.

Right.

And no, I love, I love this interview, Maria.

I love the, I love the passion, I love the obsession.

I think there's very much is an obsession there.

I love the obsession, I love the passion and I love the heart.

I love the heart that you have for the work that you do.

I speak to a lot of tech experts, for lack of better words, and not many have got into, you know, telling me how they would want to put their product into the hands of underserved communities or want it to do good and go impact beyond North America.

You know, most would say, I want, I want a skill so that I can be north.

Like I want to be in America, North America.

But oftentimes it's like, after that, there was no other plan to like, all right, how do I get it into the hands of, you know, others in the world?

But that's the real impact.

That's the real impact.

Putting this technology in the hands of people that didn't have the opportunity.

That's the real impact that we can have.

That is no.

Thank you so, so much for taking the time today.

I think we're time now, but before we end off, I want you to share quickly how people can get involved with Immersive Studios and what you're doing, but also how people can connect with you and, you know, continue to.

I know Immersive Studios is going to be, it's going to be the next big thing, so I'm not, there's no surprise there.

So tell people how they can.

Okay, let's, let's have a part two of these podcasts.

We should have a, we should in three years.

Just ask me if Emergency Studios is just doing all this.

Good.

Definitely.

I hope they're hearing that.

We're definitely going to have a part, a part two for this.

So please share how the audience can find you, how we can stay in touch with you and the work that you're doing with Immersive Studios.

I'll give you the floor to talk.

Okay, if, if you're listening to it, to this and if you're, well, a woman, a man, someone that needs guidance or you, you think I can help you in some way, the directs, I, I, I think that direct content should be LinkedIn.

So search for me on LinkedIn.

Go to our, to our website immersivestudios.com and we also have your immersive.

We didn't have the time maybe for a part two to talk about my work at your Immersive, but the website is your immersive eu.

We're actually the European branch of the association in the United states.

So it's Gatherverse.

But yeah, search for me on LinkedIn.

Send me a message if you need anything.

I'm more than happy to help and to connect you with other people or just talk to you and try to help you as much as I can.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for that.

And to our audience listening, thank you as well for tuning in today.

Thank you for listening and support and please, please, please, please take advantage of the opportunity to speak with someone like Maria Vilar, an expert, an amazing human being and honestly, someone with so much heart.

And continue to stay tuned for more exciting interviews with amazing women who are trailblazers in technology world.

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With love Miss Fabulous Talking.

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