Our Mission

A native of Istanbul, Elif has explored the creative process across many modes and art forms as an artist, including opera, film, stage, immersive theater, performance arts, and multi-media installations. The Los Angeles arts scene has been a home for Elif since 2006, where she currently resides. After studying opera at the Mimar Sinan University in Istanbul and the Peabody Institute, she furthered her studies in music and dance at the conservatory at Johns Hopkins University. She is honored to serve as the Director of Events at Immersive Art Collective, where she is committed to nurturing a supportive and collaborative artistic community.

 Nick Salas has over 20 years of experience melding left and right brains to solve business problems through technology for Fortune 500 entertainment and life science companies.

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Nick is driven and inspired by intellectual and artistic curiosity. He started life with an East Coast pedagogy in public and government policy, was waylaid for a decade in Brooklyn behind thick-framed eyeglasses, and finally found a creative home in the Los Angeles-based immersive arts community. He has acted in several immersive shows at The Count's Den and Zombie Joe's Underground Theater and is an alumnus of ZJU's storied Urban Death production. He is a short fiction writer and has also written for the stage. A long-term supporter and fan of the Immersive Art Collective, Nick is committed to helping IAC promote creative risk-taking among all people-kind. 

R.L. Adams was born in Stoughton, Massachusetts, where she spent most of her teenage years in and out of residential and group home settings. With no formal education, Rachel moved herself to California at age 18, where she built her career with a variety of entrepreneurial endeavors (including cosmetics, production, and real estate) before finally landing on her passion project of designing and operating escape rooms and immersive theater experiences, which she has been doing consistently since 2015. Recently inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic to give back to those in need, Rachel founded the Immersive Arts Collective in 2021. With IAC, Rachel aims to bridge the gap between her personal passion for the arts and her desire to give back to the youth and marginalized communities in circumstances similar to those of her upbringing, with the hope that art might be able to provide for them what it has provided for her.  

Chase made his way to Los Angeles in 1997. The Dot.com boom was an amazing time of growth for the entertainment industry, and Chase worked his way up from PA to Production Manager, ending up in commercials and on-air comedy specials.
During summer downtime to make supplemental income, Chase began recycling beverage containers for live events and music festivals. Using the CRV refunds to mentor students to make films, he traveled to travel Costa Rica & Brazil, teaching the youth about filming, editing, and the world around them.  
In 2012 he began Recycled Movie Sets as an experiment to keep scenery, and construction materials out of the landfill. With a philanthropic heart and mindset, Chase built his company by hiring challenged individuals, offering a place of work, on the job training, and new skill sets. With continuous hard work and dedication, RecycledSets.com has kept over 12,000 set walls out of the landfill, and helped over 3000 projects come to life. 
Chase is honored to be an advisor to Immersive Art Collective, offering his company Recycled Movie Sets as a Sponsor, in addition to occupational and vocational opportunities within the collective.

Shane Izykowski, born Oh Jin Kwon in Taegu, South Korea, was adopted at the age of two. Living in Northeastern Pennsylvania for most of his life, Shane has dabbled in many different mediums and art forms. He is mostly self-taught, and has spent a great deal of time experimenting with music, painting, drawing, 3D and interactive sculpture, special effects and makeup, filmmaking and directing, writing poetry and scripts, costuming, mural work & photography. He's owned his own photography business, was the Art Director for a community art gallery for two years, founded Project Street Art in 2014 & won awards for short films and community service.

In 2015, Shane drove over 3,000 miles to San Francisco, CA to live and work. During his time in San Francisco, he worked as a set designer, production designer for films, curator, Museum Preparator for the SFO Museum & the Lead Artist for Madame Tussauds SF. Shane now works as a professional painter, sculptor & podcaster (Drawing From Experience Podcast), an Art Consultant, a Fine Art Handler for The Museum of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and now as the Programs and Events Manager for IAC in Los Angeles, CA.

Cherie has worked in education for 15 years and has been working in recent years as a resource specialist for teens in grades 6-12. She faces many challenges when working with students with learning differences, but the most prevalent is convincing them that they have value and something to contribute. Most of them deal with depression and anxiety because their learning style does not fit into the mainstream educational system. Cherie meets with these students in private and group sessions to identify their strengths and learning style, create organizational strategies that increase executive functioning, and help them identify their gifts and talents. The reward is seeing the look of joy on their faces when they accomplish something they never believed was possible and to watch them grow in confidence and mental health. She is excited to support the staff of IAC in reaching an even broader audience through the arts made available by generous donors from all around the world.

Alfredo is the President of Hernández Government Affairs where he assists clients in all matters that include government advocacy, land use entitlement, community relations, political consulting, crisis management and non-profit management.
He served for eight years on the Los Angeles Prop K Central Region Oversight Committee serving as an appointee of Eric Garcetti and City Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell. Alfredo Has been appointed as a Delegate to the California State Democratic Party Convention by Congressmember Adam Schiff. 
A native Angeleno, Alfredo has lived in Hollywood his entire life and enjoys urban homesteading, architecture, science fiction, history, the Dodgers and the great outdoors.

Francesca Bifulco is a Los Angeles-based multimedia artist from Pæstum, Southern Italy. Bifulco’s distinctive line work channels a graphical quality through her primary medium of painting, crafting a personal language that carries through large-scale canvases, textural burnt wood compositions, and multidimensional installations. Bifulco’s subjects have spanned from crowds and the force of their plurality to individuals affected by social media culture, to men playing cards in a conflicted and underrepresented neighborhood of Naples, Italy. In her current works, she processes the effects of personal loss through the preservation of memory, delves into the sociopolitical awakening in the US, and celebrates an iconic symbol of her adoptive city of Los Angeles. Her approach to the different narratives is permeated with an anthropological perspective essential to her overall creative process. Bifulco is a member of the multidisciplinary artist duo, Card 0 Collective, and the LA based-women lead IAC (Immersive Art Collective), a coalition that empowers disadvantaged youth through creative outlets.

Ian Heath is an actor/movement artist originally hailing from St. Louis, MO. He has performed all over Los Angeles with companies including Thirteenth Floor, Ultra Dark Society, MetaForYou, Unbound Productions, and Zombie Joe's Underground Theater (with whom he took the show Urban Death to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2018). He has been performing at the Count's Den since 2019, and is proud to be a member of the IAC. 

Imari Tuakli is a highly charismatic and deeply passionate speaker who transitioned out of a life of artistry that spanned hundreds of millions of views and into the world of personal development where he has helped thousands of leaders, entrepreneurs and creatives find confidence, connection and purpose.

Known for his dynamic and interactive approach to his work, Imari has been invited to speak on stages from homeless shelters to Silicon Valley and has been the guiding force for next-gen leaders from Canada to Kazakhstan.

Since running the student television at his alma mater, Northwestern University, Mr. Kawabata has constantly sought out ways to patronize and support the arts. He is thrilled to lend what expertise he has (what he learned in the entertainment, media, and intellectual property program at UCLA School of Law and has learned since in practice) to advancing the cause of IAC

Tosca is a British-American artist whose dialect entirely depends on who they are talking to at the time. An award-winning actor, Tosca has performed and toured with theatre companies across Southern California. Tosca also has a great love for Shakespeare and making his works accessible for the modern audience. In her spare time, she also narrates audiobooks and enjoys cooking without measurements or recipes.