Willa Barnett

I make technical stories funny and keep shoots on the rails.

Creative Lead at Hello SciCom. Writer, host, and producer in Brooklyn, with a CS degree and a daily AI practice.

Email Willa See the work
Willa Barnett, portrait

Client work across Honda, Cloudflare, Twilio, Google, Cobblestone Labs, JLS Fund, and TalkSTEM, several through Poley Creative.

Selected work

Personality design & character writing

Haru for Honda

Through Hello SciCom, I worked on crafting the personality of Haru, Honda's social robot. Character writing where the character is a machine.

Co-producer & co-host

Yes No Maybe with Gotham Productions

A Malcolm in the Middle rewatch podcast with guests including Bryan Cranston, Linwood Boomer, and Ken Kwapis. I rotate editing and produce the social clips and graphics.

Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

18,000+ deliveries across a recent six-week window

Creator & producer

Data Leak for Mad Realities

I conceptualized, pitched, and now produce this vertical video series: directing on set, building the graphics, and running about two shoot days a month. I also pitched a Best Buy x Mad Realities holiday campaign with four creative concepts.

@dataleakshow

Mayor Mamdani leaked his phone so you can get free stuff for the World Cup

From the show: Mayor Zohran Mamdani hands over his phone. Follow @dataleakshow.

Content strategist & lead client contact

Cobblestone Labs

I built their LinkedIn and Instagram strategy: four content buckets, a founder-first LinkedIn approach, a twice-weekly cadence, and one unified cross-platform schedule. I produce carousels with their team and have sustained the relationship as their main contact.

Writer

Twilio SIGNAL 2026

Wrote the content-capture interview questions and the comedic material for Twilio's conference coverage.

Programmer, producer & host

Crown Inn, Brooklyn

I run the bar's weekly trivia night and programmed their nine-film summer movie series end to end: booking, AV setup, and promotion.

Film production

The Virgin & Making Friends short films

Producer on The Virgin (2022): scheduling for actors and production, plus day-to-day budgeting for meals, transportation, and equipment. Writer and actor on Making Friends (2023).

Comfortable under the hood

Northwestern computer science degree. Daily working fluency with LLM and agent workflows. At home in the macOS command line.

AI improv at The Annoyance

Programmer on a 2023 improv show built with Northwestern CS professor Kristian Hammond, incorporating ChatGPT as an active participant in the live show.

Potoo

Hello SciCom's internal AI agent. I built its feedback system, and ownership of the agent is transitioning to me.

Glow Beauty Fuel

Web Operations Manager: primary contact for customer support, site operations, and product drops. Built their custom Shopify store locator in Liquid with the Google Maps API and OpenCage geocoding, plus GA4 and email marketing in Mailchimp and Klaviyo.

CROWDPLEASER

Artistic collaborator on this 2022 piece: designed interactive projections in Isadora using generative AI art.

  • Premiere Pro
  • Audition
  • After Effects
  • Canva
  • Framer
  • Shopify / Liquid
  • GA4
  • Google Maps API
  • Ollama / Open WebUI

About

I studied Theatre and Computer Science at Northwestern (class of 2022), which explains most of this page. I have performed improv for over eight years and write and host around the NYC comedy scene. Through Hello SciCom I have also co-produced live and virtual events merging science and comedy.

In 2019 my team won a College Television Award, the student Emmy, for The Blackout's "Quarter Update."

Willa Barnett hosting a science comedy night at Caveat, in costume at the podium
Hosting a Carnegie Science comedy night at Caveat, NYC. The mustache was load-bearing.

Let's make something.

Resume (PDF)