An innovative force in the tech field, Miral Kotb is an Egyptian-American woman who is the CEO of her light dance company iLuminate. She is an entrepreneur, artist, dancer, technologist, public speaker, and 2x cancer survivor who has become an inspiration to others with her courage, creativity, and empowerment.
Use the scroll function at the bottom, use the left and right arrows, or swipe your finger over the images to move to the desired pictures.
.png?v=1710447517592)
.jpeg?v=1710447524895)
.png?v=1710447535194)
.png?v=1710447550859)
.webp?v=1710447555698)
| Achievements | Descripton | Fused passions into a career | Kotb combined her passion for technology, dance and art to upstart her light dance company iLuminate (move to Image #1). |
|---|---|
| Created iLuminate | In 2009, Kotb came up with the idea of iLuminate after attending a tech conference. The conference talked about mini wireless chips being able to communicate with any device; this made her realized she could use chips to communicate information to a dancer's suit while they are performing. Kotb put the mini-computers on her dancers' suits so that she could, via coding, tell the chips which lights to power on. She called the communication method "lightography", where the suits and lights are programmed to sync with the music and movements (move to Image #2). |
| Made appearances in entertainment | iLuminate has performed at a multitude of places and events, including America's Got Talent (2011; became finalists who were named "Best New Act in America"), the X Factor, Dancing with the Stars, the BET Awards, Disneyland, Nickelodeon's HALO Awards (2011), Six Flags Theme Parks, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Latin and MTV's Video Music Awards. The group also did tours with the Black Eyed Peas, Chris Brown, Christina Aguilera, Death Cab For Cutie, and more! The company also had their own international 3-year off-Broadway tour (move to Image #3). | Empowered and educated youth through public speaking | Kotb has encouraged young people to pursure STEM/STEAM opportunities and educated them on the connection between technology and art through public speaking. She has spoken at events such as Google's Made With Code, TEDx Teen and TEDx Broadway, Capital One, Wonder Woman Tech, NEXTECH, and the Apple Developer Conference (move to Image #4). |
| Survived cancer twice | Kotb has dealt with cancer twice in her life. She suffered from sarcoma, a cancer that develops in the bones or soft tissue, in 2001, affecting her ability to use her legs for her lifelong passion: dance. She eventually healed from sarcoma after doing intraoperative radiation therapy (IORT). Years later, in 2017, she had leukemia (blood cell cancer) and found out chromosomal mutations from her IORT caused it. Feeling courageous in her second battle, Kotb did stem cell therapy and ended up surviving (move to Image #5). |