Alex Rühl is an award-winning immersive creator, technologist, and innovation leader whose career spans VR content creation, enterprise consulting, and emerging technology strategy. As founder of Cats Are Not Peas and former Head of Emerging Tech at PwC, Alex has helped shape how global organizations adopt and scale immersive technologies.

Key Takeaways

• Roots in Innovation: Alex’s journey began with a fascination for new tech, inspired by her family’s early adoption of internet tools and gadgets.
• Immersive Content Pioneer: She spent seven years building VR experiences and later expanded into AR and other immersive formats, always seeking to understand how people create and engage with new media.
• Enterprise Innovation at PwC: At PwC, Alex led metaverse and emerging tech initiatives, guiding large organizations to adopt VR, AR, blockchain, AI, and quantum computing for real business value.
• Value-Driven Approach: She emphasizes that enterprise adoption hinges on clear value—saving money, saving time, or creating new revenue streams.
• Authenticity Over Transaction: Alex stresses the importance of genuine relationships in business, advocating for honesty and setting realistic expectations, especially in high-stakes innovation projects.
• Learning Through Experimentation: She shared the story of launching Geospatial Insights, an enterprise app for Apple Vision Pro, highlighting the importance of transparency about risks and learnings in new tech deployments.
• Balancing ROI and Innovation: Alex discusses the tension between the need for measurable ROI and the necessity of learning and experimentation in innovation, advising founders to focus on the right industry and buyer profiles.
• Personal Glow Up: After a decade in immersive tech, Alex is taking a well-earned break and looking forward to a new phase of “giving back,” sharing her knowledge and supporting the next generation of innovators.

About Alex Rühl

Alex Rühl is an award-winning virtual reality creator and founder of Cats Are Not Peas. Formerly head of Metaverse Technologies at PwC. Since starting her VR career in 2015, she’s written, directed and exec produced several original pieces included 360º romcom Keyed Alike (Starring Gemma Whelan, HBO’s Game of Thrones, and Natacha Karam, Fox’s 9-1-1: Lone Star), interactive VR thought experiment Playing God (premiered at Cannes XR 2019) and her most recent piece Rock Paper Scissors which had its world premiere at Venice Film Festival in 2022 (first VR piece funded by BFI Network).

A notable figure in the XR industry, she has received industry recognition for her work in immersive storytelling (The Drum’s 50 under 30, Women of the Future Awards, Pioneers of XR Award) and is a global keynote speaker on the topic of the metaverse (TEDx, BFI, Adobe, Royal Television Society, Department of International Trade & more).

Alex has worked alongside the world’s big

A "glow up" signifies a positive transformation, reflecting the journey of becoming a better, more successful version of oneself.

At The Glow Up, we humanize the startup and innovation landscape by focusing on the essential aspects of the entrepreneurial journey. Groundbreaking ideas are often ahead of their time, making resilience and perseverance vital for founders and product leaders.

In our podcast, we engage with innovators to discuss their transformative ideas, the challenges they face, and how they create value for future success.

If you're a founder or product leader seeking your own glow up, or a seasoned entrepreneur with stories to share, we invite you to join our guest list via this link.

Megan Moseley is a somatic therapist and embodiment coach at BodyWise, with a 36-year background in physical therapy and extensive training in somatic psychology, interpersonal neurobiology, nervous system resiliency, trauma release exercise, and embodiment coaching.

She integrates these disciplines to help individuals and organizations shift from surviving to thriving by regulating the nervous system and fostering authentic self-alignment.

Key Takeaways:

• Holistic Approach: Megan’s work is rooted in a holistic understanding of the body and mind, emphasizing “the body keeps the score” and the importance of healing both individual and collective nervous system dysregulation.
• From Surviving to Thriving: She identifies a global epidemic of anxiety, depression, disconnection, and disease, rooted in chronic nervous system dysregulation. Her mission is to help people move from a state of constant striving and survival into one of safety, presence, and thriving.
• Embodiment and Authenticity: Megan defines embodiment as being in authentic alignment with oneself—gut, heart, and head working together. This alignment fosters psychological safety, clarity, compassion, and collective creativity, especially in group and corporate settings.
• Corporate and Group Impact: Megan has led transformative workshops for organizations like Salt & Straw and Central City Concern, focusing on authentic leadership, nervous system regulation, and creating psychologically safe environments that encourage innovation and belonging.
• Innovative Modalities: She is integrating psychedelic facilitation (specifically psilocybin) into her practice, using trauma release exercise as an accessible, “psychedelics light” tool for processing and integration.

Megan’s approach is deeply relational and evidence-based, drawing on the latest science in nervous system regulation and trauma healing.

She emphasizes the ripple effect of personal transformation on families, workplaces, and communities, and is passionate about making her tools accessible to a wider audience.

Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share the inspiring stories from The Glow Up!

A "glow up" signifies a positive transformation, reflecting the journey of becoming a better, more successful version of oneself.

At The Glow Up, we humanize the startup and innovation landscape by focusing on the essential aspects of the entrepreneurial journey. Groundbreaking ideas are often ahead of their time, making resilience and perseverance vital for founders and product leaders.

In our podcast, we engage with innovators to discuss their transformative ideas, the challenges they face, and how they create value for future success.

If you're a founder or product leader seeking your own glow up, or a seasoned entrepreneur with stories to share, we invite you to join our guest list via this link.

Part Two:

Charlie Fink is a veteran of the extended reality (XR) and tech media industries, known for his Forbes column, the AI/XR Podcast, having attended AWE (Augmented World Expo) nine times, written three books, and taught as a professor at Chapman University. His work now blends XR, AI, and storytelling, with a focus on what’s new and breaking in technology.

Key Takeaways:

• Shift to AI: Charlie’s focus has moved from XR to AI, which he believes represents a value creation opportunity on par with the internet and mobile revolutions.
• Wearables and the Future: He sees unlimited potential in wearables, envisioning a future where humans merge more closely with machines, although he remains skeptical about the need for displays in smart glasses.
• Unintended Consequences: While acknowledging the risks and unintended consequences of new technologies, Charlie is pragmatic about the industry’s trajectory, noting that developers and users will inevitably adopt new tools regardless of warnings.
• Teaching and Community: He is passionate about teaching students to use AI effectively and remains deeply engaged with the tech community, both as a consultant and as a speaker.
• Storytelling and Hollywood: Charlie is working on animated and AI-driven content in Hollywood, emphasizing the importance of balancing creative and business decisions to achieve transcendent experiences.
• Podcasting and Media: His podcast, recently rebranded to “The AI/XR Podcast,” has grown significantly, with 50,000 downloads per month, demonstrating the value of longevity and adaptability in media.

Charlie reflects on the evolution of technology, the importance of timing, and the inevitability of most ideas failing despite the brilliance of their creators. He continues to explore new opportunities in tech, media, and consulting, driven by a desire to remain relevant and make a positive impact.

Subscribe for more inspiring stories of innovation.

About Charlie Fink ---

Charlie Fink writes a weekly technology column for Forbes covering AI and XR, and co-hosts its companion show, The AI/XR Podcast. He is the author of the critically acclaimed AR-enabled books Charlie Fink’s Metaverse (2017) and Convergence: How the World Will Be Painted With Data (2019).

Fink teaches emerging media at Chapman University in Orange, CA, and at Arizona State University’s graduate program in Narrative and Emerging Media in Los Angeles. He is also CEO of Sprocketdyne, an AI animation studio he co-founded with film director Rob Minkoff.

Fink's forty-year career at the intersection of storytelling and technology began at Walt Disney Feature Animation, where he famously conceived the idea for The Lion King and subsequently became the studio’s youngest-ever vice president of creative affairs.

A "glow up" signifies a positive transformation, reflecting the journey of becoming a better, more successful version of oneself.

At The Glow Up, we humanize the startup and innovation landscape by focusing on the essential aspects of the entrepreneurial journey. Groundbreaking ideas are often ahead of their time, making resilience and perseverance vital for founders and product leaders.

In our podcast, we engage with innovators to discuss their transformative ideas, the challenges they face, and how they create value for future success.

If you're a founder or product leader seeking your own glow up, or a seasoned entrepreneur with stories to share, we invite you to join our guest list via this link.