Team

Katie Salen
Executive Director
Katie Salen is the Executive Director of the Institute of Play, and Associate Professor in the Design and Technology program, Parsons the New School for Design. Co-author of Rules of Play, a textbook on game design, as well as The Game Design Reader (MIT Press, 2004 and 2006), she recently completed an edited volume for the MacArthur series on Digital Media and Learning called The Ecology of Games and is serving as co-editor of The International Journal of Learning and Media (MIT Press). Katie just completed a stint as lead designer on Gamestar Mechanic, a game developed by Gamelab to teach young people the play and practice of game design fundamentals. She lectures and writes extensively on game design, design education, and game culture, including authoring some of the first dispatches from the previously hidden world of machinima. Website http://www.gamersmob.com

Leah Gilliam
Director of Projects
Leah Gilliam comes to the Institute of Play after a rich history of teaching, designing and creating user experiences using both analog and digital media. Until she left to pursue her love of game design in 2006, Leah was an associate professor of Electronic Arts at Bard College as well as the chair of the Arts Division. A 2008 graduate of NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program, Leah's recent projects include Lesberation, a board game of territory capture and tile placement inspired by the rebellious beginnings of the gay-rights movement; ID, a game of identity theft in which players compete to stockpile and represent complex minority identities; and Metrophile, a big game that transforms the NYC subway system into a playing field.

Tracy Gromek
Game and Curriculum Design
Tracy Gromek draws from her wide-ranging experience as an artist, designer and teacher to create innovative games for the Institute of Play. Tracy holds an MFA in Design and Technology from Parsons, The New School for Design, and a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Before leaving to pursue her master’s, Tracy worked as an exhibition designer for the Wildlife Conservation Society at the Bronx Zoo creating and designing exhibits such as Madagascar! and Butterfly Garden. She has also animated for Disney, Hasbro and PBS, and developed and taught ESL curriculum for ages 3 to 17 in Spain and China. When she's not at the Institute of Play, Tracy creates interactive games using physical elements and computer vision for television and museums through her company, Electronic Bohemia, and develops new projects for Freedom in Interactive Wearable Art (FiiWA), her line of sporting equipment for individuals with visual and/or physical impairments.

Claudio Midolo
Game and Curriculum Design
Claudio Midolo left Italy searching for a place to explore audio-visual design, photography and interactive systems, finding in New York City and Parsons, the ideal environment to follow his passions. During the course of the two years he spent at Parsons, the New School for Design as a MFA Design and Technology student, he focused his research on the creative possibilities of code and the intersection of digital technology, human creativity and communication. He presented the soundFishing project, a procedural sonic sampler, at the MobileMusicWorkshop08 conference in Vienna and a year later he joined the 2009 MobileHCI in Bonn, Germany with his master thesis 'Phototropic Memories. During June and July 2009, Claudio was in Zambia to implement the StopStockouts mobile advocacy campaign as an Open Society Institute fellow. He's currently a part-time faculty at Parsons teaching Foundations of Time-based Digital Media. In collaboration with the Social Science Research Council and various institutions, Claudio also works as a producer for the Design for Learning team helping to implement the New Youth City Learning Network. He is honored to join the Institute of Play and Quest To Learn teams as a game designer, creating fun learning experiences for what he sees as the school of the future. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife Clio, his beloved cat Mimi and continues to follow his creative passions.

Chloe Varelidi
Game Designer and Youth Catalyst
Chloe Varelidi designs games, spaces and narratives for cities, plants, animals, far away lands, children and grown ups. These designs take the form of multimedia pieces that vary from household robots to installation art to games. Chloe has a background in Architecture and Engineering and also holds an MFA in Design and Technology from Parsons, The New School for Design. Since 2007, she has been part of the Institute of Play team, working with youth and developing innovative tools that embrace game design as an agent of learning and change. In her free time she works in her own studio, in Brooklyn. As a member of various collectives she has designed games for the Solar One Festival, the Philip Johnson Glasshouse Organization, and has exhibited in the 2008 Shenzhen / Hong Kong Biennial of Architecture & Urbanism, the 2nd Annual Exhibition of Art and Science in Beijing, the 5th Pan-Hellenic Architectural Exhibition, the 2005 New Trends in Architecture in Eastern Europe and Asia Pacific and the 2005 International Biennale, in Florence.

Evonne Tsang
Director of Administration and Human Resources
As Director of Administration, Evonne handles everything from human resources and bookkeeping to research and event planning for the Institute of Play. She has worked in Human Resources for PricewaterhouseCoopers and Barnes & Noble College Bookstores. As a native New Yorker fortunate enough to have attended some great public schools, she is very excited about taking part in developing innovative public education experiences for others. She has a B.A. in English with a minor in Creative Writing from NYU. She has written an interactive children's book combining prose and comic book pages that is scheduled for publication in Fall 2009. She is an avid practitioner of Google-fu and thinks wearing jeans to work is pretty keen.

Board of directors
Carole Artigiani • Global Kids
Peter Lee • Gamelab
Franklin Madison • ITAC
Jay Melican • Intel
Sophie Rogers-Gessert • Demos
Katie Salen • Institute of Play
Eric Zimmerman • Gamelab
Sally Rosenthal

Advisors
John Seely Brown • USC
Alex Chisholm • NBC
James Paul Gee • Arizona State University
Mizuko Ito • Annenberg Center for Communication, USC
Robert Hughes • President New Visions for Public Schools
Michael Levine • Joan Ganz Center
Jane McGonigal • Institute for the Future
Amit Pitaru • NYU Intertelecommunications Program
Bob Stein • Institute for the Future of the Book
Douglas Rushkoff • Writer
Randy Swearer • Designer
Robert Torres • Design by Design
Loretta Wolozin • Parsons the New School for Design
Connie Yowell • MacArthur Foundation
Nichole Pinkard • University of Chicago's Center for Urban School Improvement