Linda Jacobson is a pioneering immersive tech strategist and gerontologist dedicated to enhancing the lives of elders and caregivers through the use of XR and conversational AI.

This summer marks 30 years since Linda was recruited by Silicon Graphics as the world’s first Virtual Reality Evangelist. In that role, she introduced hundreds of enterprises, institutions, and government agencies to immersive simulation, bridging the gap between hardware and software development and public understanding of VR, and helping to define foundational use cases in education, healthcare, AEC, manufacturing, and the arts.

Previously, as a co-founding editor of Wired, author of CyberArts and Garage VR, and nationally touring motion-capture performance artist, Linda helped move VR from a niche research topic to a publicly accessible, creatively inspired vision, influencing what we now see in immersive education and journalism, and social and therapeutic VR. 

Linda also has written dozens of successful immersive and ambient computing patent applications, and, with Carolina Cruz-Neira, Christian Greuel, and Steve Hansted, co-founded one of the first enterprise VR production studios. Since then she has led communications and marketing for many companies in the XR ecosystem.

Linda is a director emeritus of the Virtual World Society, and member of the IEEE Standards Association Workgroup on Technology Standards for the Aging.