Romain Sepehr Vakilitabar

Romain Sepehr Vakilitabar is the ED of Pathos Labs, a non-profit arts laboratory dedicated to using media to dismantle hatred and foster understanding. Through immersive experiences—like traveling between Palestine and Israel, living voluntarily homeless, and hitchhiking across the country—Romain has gained deep insights into human empathy and connection. As a part of Pathos Labs, he created PopShift which collaborates with hundreds of top Hollywood storytellers to reshape harmful narratives. PopShift centers diverse voices and perspectives, in order to change dominant cultural narratives. Romain’s previous roles include traveling with Unreasonable at Sea to scale high impact social ventures globally and serving as a co-founder of Watson Institute, where he was Vice President. Recipient of NBCUniversal’s “Erase the Hate” award and a speaker of a TEDx talk about how to use media to dismantle hatred, Romain’s approach to storytelling focuses on deepening our curiosity of others.