Marisha Ray

Marisha Ray Huber was born in Mount Washington, Kentucky. She began acting at the Actors Theatre of Louisville at age 12. In 2008, at 19, she moved to Los Angeles after receiving an offer of representation from an agent. During her early time in Los Angeles, she supported herself by canvassing for the 2008 presidential election and later as a street performer on Hollywood Boulevard, dressed as Tinker Bell. A turning point in her early career came with the production of the Batgirl fan series, *Batgirl: Spoiled* (2012), where she played the title character. This series helped her gain recognition due to the limited Batgirl media available at the time. She also hosted the web series *Super Power Beat Down* from 2012 until 2016.

In 2012, Ray joined Matthew Mercer’s home Dungeons & Dragons campaign, playing Keyleth, a half-elf druid. This campaign later evolved into the web series *Critical Role* in 2015, airing on Geek & Sundry. For the second campaign of *Critical Role*, she portrayed Beauregard, a human monk. Ray became the Creative Director for Geek & Sundry on July 28, 2017, overseeing content creation. During her tenure, Geek & Sundry reached its peak Twitch subscription numbers in January 2018. In 2019, *Critical Role* separated from Geek & Sundry to establish Critical Role Productions. Ray assumed the role of creative director for the new company. That year, *Critical Role* received both the Webby Winner and People’s Voice Winner awards in the “Games (Video Series & Channels)” category at the 2019 Webby Awards.

Under Critical Role Productions, Ray has been instrumental in expanding the brand. The company launched a Kickstarter campaign to create an animated series of their first campaign, *The Legend of Vox Machina*, which raised over $11 million against a $750,000 goal. Amazon Prime Video later acquired the streaming rights to this series, where Ray reprised her role as Keyleth and served as executive producer. The series has since been renewed for multiple seasons. In the third campaign of the web series, which began in 2021, Ray plays the warlock/sorcerer Laudna. In 2022, she co-wrote *A Familiar Problem*, a one-page RPG, and helped launch Scanlan Shorthalt Music, Critical Role Productions’ record label, contributing to albums like *Welcome to Tal’Dorei* and *Welcome to Wildemount*. She participated in the charity boxing event Creator Clash 2 in April 2023.