Meet Our team

Ilya Vidrin is the Founder and Director of The Meaning Institute, as well as Assistant Professor of Creative Practice Research and Core Faculty at the Institute for Experiential Robotics. Born into a refugee family, Ilya’s work engages with and investigates ethics of interaction, including the embodiment of care, trust, cultural competence, and social responsibility. Ilya pursued undergraduate studies in psychology and neuroscience at Northeastern University, holds a Master's Degree in Human Development from Harvard University, and a practice-based PhD in performance philosophy from Coventry University in the United Kingdom.

Steven Geofrey is an award-winning information designer. Through his creative practice, Steven explores themes of representation, narrative, language, and human experience, seeking to address the varied possible responses to one question in particular: What does it mean to employ visualization as a medium in which radical representation can deconstruct privileged, canonical, and dominant perspectives?  Steven received his B.A. summa cum laude, in chemistry and Asian studies (with distinction) from St. Olaf College, and an M.S. in molecular biophysics and biochemistry from Yale University. He was a Fulbright Fellow in computational biophysics research at Kyoto University.

Originally from Dallas, Texas, Jessi Stegall is a dance-theatre artist, applied ethicist, educator, and filmmaker based in Boston, Massachusetts. She has been an artist-in-residence at Boston Center for the Arts, Harvard ArtLab, National Parks Service, Windhover Performing Arts Center, and was recently featured as one of Dance Magazine's "25 to Watch" (2022). As a dancer, Jessi has performed works by Raja Feather Kelly, Jill Johnson, Ali Kenner Brodsky, Mariel Pettee, and Jamila Glass. In addition to her work in dance, Jessi holds an M.S. in Bioethics from Harvard University, a B.S. in Expressive Art Therapy from Lesley University, and is an alumna of Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. 

Alec Stubbs is a philosopher and a Teaching Professor at Northeastern University. He was previously a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Boston & The Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET)

His work focuses primarily on social and political philosophy as well as continental philosophy, existentialism, ethics, and philosophy of technology. Alec thinks and writes about the meaning of work and play in our lives, economic democracy, post-capitalist alternatives, prefigurative social change, and meaning-making.