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Dr. Nick Bowman
Nick Bowman is Professor and Programs Director of the MA Media Studies and PhD Mass Communication curriculum in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. He is a media and communication scholar with an extensive research career focused on the uses and effects of video games. He has published more than 140 peer-reviewed academic manuscripts, with recent studies focused on the functional role of video games in daily life, from video game nostalgia to use of gaming for mood management. He works with other scholars and game developers to advance the study and design of video games for prosocial purposes, including violence reduction and perspective-taking. He is the Launch Editor of the newest journal of the International Communication Association, Global Perspectives in Communication, and was recently the Fulbright Taiwan Wu Jing-Jyi Arts & Culture Fellow at the National Chengchi University in Taipei. He has taught courses on video games and media psychology in Belgium, Germany, Mexico, and Taiwan.
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Dr. Mark Danger Chen
Mark Danger Chen is a games scholar and assistant teaching professor of media and learning at Appalachian State University. They oversee Esoteric Gaming, an alternative publication outlet that celebrates gaming diversity through detailed accounts of arcane and marginal gaming practices. Mark also wrote Leet Noobs: The Life and Death of an Expert Player Group in World of Warcraft, an ethnographic account of how a new team learned to excel through the use of game mods and then died in a fiery meltdown catalyzed by the same mods. In a previous life, Mark was a webmaster and game designer for the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. Mark wants a die-cast 1st generation Soundwave for Christmas. You can reach Mark at @mcdanger.
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Drew Crecente, JD
Drew Crecente (they/them) is founder and executive director of Jennifer Ann's Group and also runs their Gaming Against Violence program. Drew is a teen dating violence lead at Emory's Injury Prevention Research Center (IPRCE) and a published researcher on violence prevention through video games. Drew speaks at conferences about the use of video games as an innovative intervention for preventing violence. Game production credits include the consent game ADRIFT, the healthy relationship game HONEYMOON, and the media literacy game Culture Overlord, a Games for Change Awards Finalist in the category of Best Learning Game. Drew's violence prevention efforts were recognized by Everytown as a 2024 Changemaker.
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Sabrina Culyba
Sabrina Culyba (she/her) is a Pittsburgh-based game designer and founder of Ludoliminal. Her professional work has spanned online games, VR, mobile apps, location-based entertainment, and board games across a variety of industries from healthcare to education. She is the author of The Transformational Framework (ETC Press, 2018) and has spoken on game design and the transformational power of games at a number of conferences including the Games for Change festival, Serious Play, Meaningful Play, and Dataviz+Cancer. Sabrina serves on the Board for Global Game Jam and Broke the Game. She also co-hosts the yearly XR Brain Jam at the Games for Change Festival.
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Lyndsey Dearlove
Lyndsey Dearlove is a passionate advocate for social justice with nearly 20 years of experience addressing and preventing domestic and sexual violence. As the Global Director of Operations for The NO MORE Foundation, she leads an international movement dedicated to ending domestic abuse by raising awareness and driving culture change. Before joining NO MORE, Lyndsey led Hestia's response to the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 and launched initiatives like 'Safe Spaces' and 'Online Safe Spaces.' She co-developed the Bright Sky app and works extensively with employers to address domestic violence in the workplace. Lyndsey also serves as a trustee for The Next Chapter charity and is a 2025 Churchill Fellow.
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ElsaMarie D´Silva
ElsaMarie D´Silva is an award-winning social entrepreneur and founder of Red Dot Foundation (Safecity), a platform that crowdsources stories of sexual and gender-based violence to make public spaces safer. With over a decade of experience at the intersection of gender equality, technology, and urban safety, she works globally to empower women and girls to break the silence and influence policy through data. ElsaMarie has been recognised by the Vital Voices Global Leadership Awards, the United Nations, and the Government of India, among others. She is also a co-founder of the Brave Movement to end childhood sexual violence and has served as an advisor to the W7 under the G7. Formerly an aviation professional, she brings a disciplined, systems-thinking approach to social change. ElsaMarie lives between Mumbai and Washington DC and is passionate about building a world where everyone can live with dignity, freedom, and safety.
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Dr. Kimberly Hieftje
Dr. Kimberly Hieftje is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and co-director/co-founder of XRPeds at Yale and the new Yale Center for Immersive Technologies in Pediatrics. For the past 15 years, her research has focused on the development, evaluation, and implementation of health and clinical interventions for youth that utilize XR and game technology. Dr. Hieftje has led teams that have developed game interventions focused on topics including e-cigarette, marijuana, alcohol, and tobacco use prevention, HIV/STI prevention and testing, empowering teen girls on their sexual health, bystander intervention, LGBTQ bullying, mental health promotion, and grief/loss of a child. Dr. Hieftje is also the Editor-in-Chief of the Games for Health Journal, the premier journal in the field of serious games for health and clinical applications.
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Hope Givers
The "Original Teen Mental Wellness Show", Hope Givers, is an Emmy® Award-winning PBS series for teens, educators, and parents. Their youth mental health series is Health Education Standards aligned and included in the PBS Mental Health Educator toolkit as well as the Sesame Workshop database.
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Dr. Ruud Jacobs
Ruud Jacobs is an assistant professor at the Department of Communication Science of the University of Twente. His research is mediapsychological, mostly focusing on the impacts of persuasive games and the ways in which they work to change attitudes. In 2017 he defended his dissertation, titled Playing to Win Over, as part of the Persuasive Gaming in Context joint research effort. Ruud lectures in technological aspects of communication science, and talks about games whenever he can.
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Lucas J.W. Johnson
Lucas J.W. Johnson is an author, game designer, and entrepreneur. He's published several works of fiction including his 2022 debut novel The Clockwork Empire, and is the founder of Silverstring Media Inc., a narrative design and videogame studio. Lucas has experimented with interactive narratives, game design, and emergent storytelling for his whole life, writing stories and running tabletop roleplaying games since he was young. With Silverstring Media, he has written several critically-acclaimed and award-winning games including Glitchhikers: The Spaces Between, Flow Weaver, Extrasolar, and Timespinner.
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Kai Lewis
Kai Lewis (they/them) is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in Southern California specializing in LGBTQIA mental health. Lewis works with youth, teens, adults, and relational units to explore identity intersectionality through collaborative and intentional therapeutic processes. They recognize the importance of video and tabletop games as a therapeutic tool for exploration of emotions, social connection, identity exploration and development, and roleplaying, and they regularly employ these techniques to facilitate therapy with patients of all ages. Lewis is also an active member at their local LGBTQIA nonprofit center as an advocate for accessible mental health care for underserved communities, as well as is a speaker, consultant, and author on LGBTQIA and gender diverse mental health and education. Additionally, Lewis is involved in research on how to further support LGBTQIA patient's medical and mental health care through affirming and innovative modalities.
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Dr. Krista-Lee Meghan Malone
Dr. Krista-Lee M. Malone is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction’s Game Design Certificate at UW-Madison and Director of the UW Game Lab. Her past research includes studies on World of Warcraft guilds, language games in Taiwan (where she concurrently worked as a designer and consultant) and using game design, Twitch.tv, and Discord in education. Dr. Malone is currently in the field researching positive masculinity and the creation of third places. Outside of research, she is a board member of MKEsports, an alliance aimed at positively growing the culture and connectivity of regional esports groups, gamers, businesses, and community partners. If you want to geek out with her, she is known as GamerAnthro across Bluesky, X, and Twitch.
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Dr. Brooke Morrill
Dr. Brooke Morrill serves as the Senior Director of Education at Schell Games. Morrill uses her expertise in behavioral science, psychology, and research to increase the impact of and engagement in the company's educational and transformational games. She identifies and secures extramural project funding in both the federal and private sectors in order to create and iteratively develop innovative, interactive experiences. In addition, she collaborates with universities and research institutions for product development and evaluation. She also maintains an active Board Certified Behavior Analyst-Doctoral credential from the Behavior Analyst Certification Board. Morrill serves on the Education Working Group for the Extended Reality Association (XRA), which promotes the responsible development and thoughtful advancement of virtual, augmented and mixed reality.
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Dr. Amy Mueller
Amy Mueller is an assistant professor of learning technologies at the University of Oklahoma in the Instructional Leadership and Academic Curriculum program. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on educational and instructional technologies to pre-service and practicing educators. Prior to her arrival at the University of Oklahoma she taught 4K for Head Start and worked as a K-5 Technology Teacher at a dual language immersion program in a diverse, public, urban title-1 school. Her research interests include: culturally and linguistic responsive and sustaining education, Indigenous education, liberatory education, elementary education, games-based learning, maker education, STEM education, digital literacy, multiliteracies, design based research, and codesign & community action research. In her limited free time, she likes to play video games with her kids.
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Vignesh Mukund
Vignesh is a transdisciplinary designer who leverages play as the primary tool to drive transformative educational change. He championed Games for Learning at UNESCO MGIEP, leading to the creation of the Digital Games for Peace Challenge - an innovative learning experience programme that enabled youth across geographies to collaborate and design games that combat violent extremism. Vignesh has designed and published studies on the efficacy of digital game-based learning and delivered numerous talks and experiential gaming interventions at events such as Games for Change and the FIFA World Cup 2022.
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Kenji Ono
Kenji Ono is a veteran Japanese game journalist, educator, and community advocate. He began his career in 1994 as an editor for Game Critique magazine, becoming editor-in-chief in 1999. Since 2000, he has worked as a freelance journalist, covering major gaming events like Tokyo Game Show, GDC, and E3, and conducting interviews with industry leaders. Ono has been deeply involved with the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) Japan chapter, serving as its president from 2012 to 2017 and continuing as an honorary director. In addition to his journalism, he teaches game design, writing, and media studies at several institutions, including the International Professional University of Technology in Tokyo. His publications include What Game Creators Should Know 2 (O'Reilly Japan), and he contributes regularly to media outlets such as Mainichi Shimbun. Ono is committed to bridging cultures through games and promoting education and community development in the gaming industry.
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Dr. Elizabeth L. Richeson
Dr. Elizabeth L. Richeson is a Psychologist in El Paso, Texas, the head of the Advisory Board for Jennifer Ann's Group, and former president of the Texas Psychological Foundation. She was recognized as the 2018 Psychologist of the Year by the Texas Psychological Association; is an expert on teen dating violence; appears regularly on news and talk shows; and lectures nationwide on a variety of issues related to teenagers, young adults, and healthy relationships. She lived and worked in a variety of settings in Japan, Micronesia, South Korea, and Thailand and wrote her doctoral dissertation on Adaptation to Geographic Relocation at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Her clinical and administrative positions have included Program Director of Adult Psychiatric Units, Adjunct Professor at Texas Tech Health Sciences Center and University of Maryland International, and maintaining a full-time clinical practice for more than 30 years. She is considered the area authority on eating disorders for the Air Force and Army for outpatient and inpatient treatment.
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Sandra van Rijswijk
Sandra is the Founder & Treasurer of Games for Health Europe.
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Jo Sharpen
Jo Sharpen is a specialist in violence against women and girls, child development and the impacts of trauma. She has a special interest in how the online space can be used to support and empower survivors of abuse. Jo is now a freelance consultant after previously being the director of policy at AVA, a national UK charity.
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Sweet Baby Inc.
Sweet Baby Inc. is a narrative development and consultation studio based in Montreal and working around the globe. We aim to make games more engaging, more meaningful, and more inclusive, for everyone.
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Dr. Moses Wolfenstein
Moses Wolfenstein is a professor at El Camino College in Torrance, CA where he serves as Distance Education Faculty Coordinator and is leading the development of the new Games and Playable Media Department. Moses has been working in and around game design since 2006 as a designer, research, and teacher. His doctoral research with the Games+Learning+Society research group at UW-Madison focused on the intersection of games, learning, and leadership in MMO's.
