Advisory Board

Joyce Bettencourt

Joyce Bettencourt is President of the Board at AvaCon, Principal & Executive Creative Director at The Vesuvius Group, Web 2.0 Specialist / Digital Media Producer at Global Kids, and Graphic Designer at studio h2o.
 
Joyce is an artist, content creator, & evangelist of online social media and believes in its power to raise social awareness, foster community, & spark creative collaboration through internet mediums like blogging, podcasting, video, machinima, & virtual worlds and has used mash ups of all of these to create provocative art installations.
 
She is the cofounder and Creative Director of The Vesuvius Group which is a collective of idea conceptualizers and techy-creatives working together online and within virtual worlds such as Second Life, on collaborative projects that try to make a difference within the world at large.
 
Joyce is also the web 2.0 specialist for Global Kids, which runs online digital media initiatives to prepare urban youth in becoming global citizens and community leaders. They have a presence in the online virtual world Second Life, where they use Teen Second Life as a tool for education, game development, and issue advocacy, and where they partner with outside organizations such as the Field Museum, UNICEF, and the U.S. Holocaust Museum to bring their work to teens. She also developed and is chief editor of their widely read youth media focused blog holymeatballs.org.
 
Her prior professional experience is as a visual artist and designer who has been involved in everything from corporate branding campaigns to collaborative street art performances. Her artwork has been shown in the United States, Australia, and online through virtual exhibitions.
 
Joyce earned her BFA in Visual Design / Illustration at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth in 2000. She is studying at Singularity University in 2012.
 
Watch her YouTube channel. View her Facebook page. Read her her LinkedIn profile, and her Meetup profile. Read metaverse musings — a curated journal on the future of the metaverse. Follow her Twitter feed.