Carol Alynn Payne is a color scientist and imaging technologist currently serving as Technical Advisory Committee Chair of the Academy Software Foundation — the industry’s neutral forum for open source software collaboration across visual effects, animation, and image creation, founded by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.

In that role, she also leads the OpenColorIO project and co-chairs the ASWF’s Diversity & Inclusion Working Group, which she founded.

She began her career at Industrial Light & Magic, a Lucasfilm Company, where she spent nearly six years in roles culminating in Color & Imaging Scientist — developing a passion for how imagery is captured, created, digitally manipulated, and displayed to make content shine.

At ILM, Carol contributed to more than 30 films including “The Irishman,” “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” and “Avengers: Infinity War.” She went on to spend four years at Netflix as an Imaging Technologist on the Creative Technology team, where she led the design of an HDR-first review solution for animated feature films and contributed to the architecture of the ACES OCIOv2 Configs.

Most recently, she served as Senior Color Scientist at Apple, designing a scene-referred color management pipeline for CG content built on OpenColorIO 2.3+ with an HDR-first focus. Carol is a founding member of Women in Visual Effects and is active in both SMPTE and ACM SIGGRAPH.