Professor Game Podcast

Kristen Toohill believes that games are powerful tools for organizational development. She writes books that use the interactivity and immersion of games to solve issues that face organizations today, such as reducing unconscious bias and learning 21st-century human skills. She has worked in the video game industry as a Quality Assurance Tester and SCRUM Master on an MMORPG (massively-multiplayer online role-playing game). She has also done organizational development and games work for Green Tree Games and Revelian. Additionally, Kristen has performed qualitative research within the technological mining and comic book industries. Kristen received her Master's degree in Business Innovation from Northeastern University and her Bachelor's in Humanistic Psychology and Business Management from Lesley University. Currently, Kristen is a doctoral student in the Leadership PsyD program at William James College.

Antonis is a soft skills trainer, facilitator and consultant, combining experiential learning with gamification to ensure a holistic, playful and impactful approach to capacity building, adaptable to the learners' needs.

Joel Comm is an entrepreneur, NY Times bestselling author, and new media innovator. An expert on harnessing the power of social media and mobile applications to expand your brand's reach and engage in active relationship marketing, Joel is a sought-after public speaker who leaves his audience inspired, entertained, and armed with strategic tools to create a new media campaign that will explode their business.

Dustin is currently focused on building and growing his podcast community Board Gaming with Education. Dustin has experience teaching English as a second language to a variety of age levels - from kindergarten to university students. He also works in the field of education in various capacities, including consulting, research, and running and hosting tutoring programs. He is always looking for ways to create a more engaging classroom to develop a strong classroom culture to strengthen learning. This is how he founded Board Gaming with Education. He is the founder of Board Gaming with Education and the host of the podcast. He has a lot of support from his amazing wife Grace. You can find Dustin playing board games with friends, teaching, running around LA training for races, or at any of the "Board Gaming with Education" events.

Bianca Woods is Senior Manager of Programming for The eLearning Guild and the founder of Clever Raptor, an L&D design studio. With degrees in both art education and education media design & technology, she's passionate about demystifying design and technology for others. She loves designing course content and media, test driving new learning technology, and taking photos of bizarre warning signs.

John Fallon is an English teacher at Notre Dame High School in West Haven, CT. John has designed Dolus: Finding the Journal of Odysseus an immersive ARG (alternate reality game) designed to augment his students' exploration of Homer's Odyssey.

He also co-designed Blind Protocol with Paul Darvasi, an inter-school ARG for his 9th-grade students that instructs on research skills and privacy-related current events. He has also developed lessons to teach commercial games, like Her Story, as literary texts.

His game-based learning work has been featured on National Public Radio's MindShift, Edutopia, several books from Carnegie Mellon's ETC Press and Peter Lang Publishing, BAM! Radio Network, and District Administration magazine.

John also hosts The Good Game Podcast with Tobias Staaby.

Paul Smith is one of the world's leading experts in business storytelling. He's one of Inc. Magazine's Top 100 Leadership Speakers of 2018, a storytelling coach, and bestselling author of the books The 10 Stories Great Leaders Tell, Sell with a Story, Lead with a Story, and Parenting with a Story. He holds an MBA from the Wharton School, is a former consultant at Accenture, and former executive and 20-year veteran of The Procter & Gamble Company.

Dr. Michael Rucker is a peer-reviewed author with over a decade of professional writing experience. For many years he served as the Health Tech expert for About, Inc's Verywell Health and is currently the Chief Digital Officer for Active Wellness, a global health management company ranked in the top 40 by Club Industry. This year Dr. Rucker was also tapped by HIMSS as a top 10 health influencer. He has been published in the academic journals International Journal of Workplace Health Management and Nutrition Research and featured in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, CIO.com, and elsewhere. Dr. Rucker is a prolific writer and sought-out speaker on the science of fun, as well as an avid blogger who has interviewed over 100 thought leaders for his website, michaelrucker.com. He can also be found on Instagram under the handle @thewonderoffun.

Steve is CEO of Pug Interactive, a technology & design leader in engagement, retention, and community activation. He has 17+ years of direct experience in the video game industry, having designed and produced several AAA games for Disney Interactive, Electronic Arts, Sega and Ubisoft that have generated sales in excess of $650 million. He is frequently sought as a speaker, having spoken at Game Developer's Conference, South by Southwest, SIGGRAPH, Banff New Media Festival, GameON Finance, nextMEDIA and several others. He also has enjoyed an amazing Lebanese dinner with an actual Canadian Astronaut.

Scott Crabtree helps people apply science to thrive at work. After earning a degree in cognitive science from Vassar College, he went on to lead the design and development of video games and other software. He discovered the science of thriving (positive psychology and other brain sciences) in 2003 and immediately became a passionate student and teacher of that research. He resigned his senior leadership position at Intel in 2011 to found Happy Brain Science. His Happy Brain Science clients include DreamWorks, Nike, Kaiser-Permanente, Boeing, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Activision, Blizzard Entertainment, and NBC. He continues to use his game development background to 'gamify' all of his keynotes and workshops. He's also produced the successful 'serious card game' Choose Happiness @ Work. He applies the latest findings from adult learning and hears from audience members years later that they still remember and apply his immediately applicable techniques. When not presenting the science of thriving at work, Scott enjoys playing music and getting into Oregon wilderness, especially with his wife and two daughters.