Maria Rivera has over 15 years of Management, Sales and Technology Training, Project Management, Web Development, Video Production, and Training Development experience in Fortune 500 companies, educational institutions, and professional service organizations. She is currently the Director of Continuing Education at Berkeley College. She is also an Education consultant for VRspaces. TV working on various on VR, AR, and AI projects.

She also led strategic initiatives at NYU The School of Professional Studies as the Associate Director for the Management and Systems Graduate Degree Program, the Management & Technology Continuing Education Programs.

Maria has produced a variety of blended digital media training solutions for various organizations/industries and has spoken at conferences including AT&T’s HACEMOS Leadership conference, HISPA.org Youth Conferences, Trenton Computer Festivals, mLearning conference, the 2019 ACE Women’s Network Women of Color Conference at Vaughn College. She spoke about “The Reality of Extended Reality” at the 2021 International Institute for Learning - Innovation and Leadership conference. In addition, she was a speaker at the ATD Suncoast Event in March 2021: “Women Making a Difference in Talent Development.” She recently moderated a panel on “Building a Future Work Ready Workforce. Practical Strategies for Upskilling and Reskilling,” this Summer at Saint John’s University. The audience was the Metropolitan New York College Career Planning Officer’s Association.

She co-authored the paper “Using Coding Competitions to Develop STEM Skills in Graduate Education” With Andrés Fortino, PhD . This paper came in second place for the “Best Paper Award” 2021, which was announced at this year’s IEEE conference.

Maria is currently teaching the “Immersive Media In The Age Of Ai, Virtual Reality, And Augmented Reality” for NYU SPS Preston Robert Tisch Institute for Global Sport.

She received her BA from Lehman College and her MA in Adult Education & Training from The University of Phoenix. She is a certified NYS/NJ Real Estate Instructor, Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), and earned a Data Visualization Certificate from the New York University School of Professional Studies.

She is the co-organizer of the XR Learning and Training Meetup. Her industry affiliations include the Association for Talent Development (NYC & Northern NJ - VP of Marketing and Communication), the Project Management Institute (NYC), The Society for Human Resource Management (National & NYC), and the National Speaker Association. Giving back to the community is something that she always makes time to do. She has participated in HISPA’s Role Model Program and helped design and delivered an App Development Training Program for middle school and high school students in NY & NJ.