Time Inc.’s VR Guru Is Forging a New Path Through Immersive Storytelling

Long before she became the resident VR expert at one of the country’s top publishers, Mia Tramz was finding low-tech ways to create immersive experiences. While participating in a sculpture installation as a visual arts student at Columbia University, “I made a sculpture with mirrored fragments on it that you’d lay under with somebody else, and you’d hold hands and listen to a song and look at these twinkly mirror lights above—it was so weird!” she recalled. “But it was sort of like VR. It was about putting yourself into something.”