Transmedia Innovator and Cultural Worldbuilder Trevor McFedries Joins SCI-Arc Board

SCI-Arc is proud to welcome Trevor McFedries as the newest member of its Board of Trustees.

McFedries is the founder of Brud, a technology company focused on leveraging boundary-pushing technologies to build a radical, intelligent, and accessible entertainment company for a new generation. Before creating Brud, he was known professionally as Yung Skeeter and worked as a DJ, producer, and director for acts including Ke$ha, Azealia Banks, and Katy Perry. McFedries has also performed at music festivals Lollapalooza and Coachella, served as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Bad Robot, and was an early employee at Spotify.

Through Brud, McFedries also created the first computer-generated virtual popstar Miquela Sousa, most broadly known as Lil Miquela. Miquela is a Gen Z icon who has amassed more than 5M followers and 50M+ streams across platforms worldwide, recently signed with CAA as the agency’s first virtual client, and performed at Lollapalooza 2020. She has modeled for Prada, Calvin Klein, Burberry, and more; interviewed artists at Coachella; graced the covers of Wired, V Magazine, L’Officiel, 032C, Wonderland, ES Magazine, and Highsnobiety; and was named one of Time's 25 Most Influential People on the Internet in 2018.

Though Miquela’s purpose has always been to question and confront the social norms of online platforms, she has additionally been a vehicle for philanthropy, generating sponsorship revenue for social causes such as the LA-based California Wildfire Relief Fund, Innocence Project, Justice for Youth, and Black Girls Code. Since its inception in Los Angeles 2017, Brud has raised funds from venture firms Sequoia Capital, Spark Capital, and SV Angel, among others. McFedries also acts independently as an angel investor for companies in need of funding.

SCI-Arc Director and CEO Hernán Díaz Alonso expressed the invaluable contribution of McFedries’s appointment to the board and school as a whole: “Trevor is a visionary and disruptor who has long been at the forefront of the intersection of technology, society, and culture. He will challenge us to explore new territories and possibilities, joining us at a time in which unconventional thinking is required more than ever.”

“As a longtime fan of the school I'm very passionate about SCI-Arc's mission to explore physical and abstract constructs of culture and reimagine their role in the future,” McFedries shared of his excitement in joining the SCI-Arc community. “I am proud to join the SCI-Arc board and am very much looking forward to doing my part in stewarding the next generation of architectural thinkers.”