Games for Change (G4C) provides support, visibility and shared resources to organizations and individuals using digital games for social change. This is the primary community of practice for those interested in making digital games about the most pressing issues of our day, from poverty to race and the environment.



BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Lucy Bernholz is the Founder and President of Blueprint Research & Design, Inc. a strategy consulting firm that helps philanthropic individuals and institutions achieve their missions. Bernholz is also the publisher of Philanthropy2173, an award winning blog about the business of giving, and she serves as Executive Producer of The Giving Channel on Fora.tv. Dr. Bernholz is a noted analyst of the philanthropic industry and has published articles in the trade and general press, edited collections, and scholarly journals. Her most recent book, Creating Philanthropic Capital Markets: The Deliberate Evolution, was published in 2004. Bernholz has a BA from Yale University and a MA and PhD from Stanford University.

Sharon Knight has spent the past 6 years working for Electronic Arts in both corporate finance and operations in North America and the UK, where she was involved in promoting Women in Gaming as a speaker and mentor. Most recently, Sharon was Senior Vice President for Central Development Services, which provides integrated development solutions in the areas of global localization, quality assurance, motion capture, art, and mastering to EA's studios worldwide. She also oversaw first party relations with Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo with regards to product quality. While at EA, Sharon gained considerable experience with captive shared service and outsourced solutions in emerging markets.  Prior to EA, Sharon held senior management positions in finance with Gap Inc. and KFC; she started her career in commercial banking in Chicago.  Knight has a BA from Smith College and an MBA from Kellogg Graduate School of Management. She is also on the board of Women's Initiative for Self Employment in San Francisco.

Dave Rejeski works at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, where he is the Director of the Foresight and Governance Project and the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, a partnership between the Wilson Center and the Pew Charitable Trusts. In 2002, he helped launch the Serious Games Initiative and in 2003, Games for Change > > He has been a Visiting Fellow at Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and an adjunct affiliated staff member at RAND. From 1994 to 2000, he worked at White House Council on Environmental Quality and the White House Office of Science and Technology (OSTP) on a variety of technology and R&D issues. Before moving to OSTP, he was head of the Future Studies Unit at the Environmental Protection Agency. He sits on the advisory boards of a number of organizations, including the Environmental Protection Agency’s Science Advisory Board; the National Science Foundation’s Advisory Committee on Environmental Research and Education; the Committee on Science, Engineering and Public Policy of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS); the National Council of Advisors of the Center for the Study of the Presidency; the Journal of Industrial Ecology, the Greening of Industry Network, and the University of Michigan’s Corporate Environmental Management Program. He has graduate degrees in public administration and environmental design from Harvard and Yale and a degree in Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design.

Gobion Rowlands is the Chairman and co-founder of Red Redemption Ltd - the very successful Oxford based independent developers of socially positive computer games that brought climate change to the international gaming marketplace. Gobion’s environmental gaming industry expertise has led him to be appointed a “Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts” (FRSA) in 2008, a “Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society” (FRGS) and a "Fellow of the Royal Institution" (FRI) in 2010 and an ‘in demand’ speaker and writer on numerous subjects including serious computer games, social enterprise, climate change and communication. He also spent a year as an Affiliate Researcher of Sustainability and Communications for the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University and recently lectured at the Skoll School of Social Enterprise and the University of the Creative Arts. Under Gobion’s guidance Red Redemption has won a number of awards and grants including a UK government Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) "Smart Innovation Award", a UK government Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) "Climate Challenge Award". He was also nominated for a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer award in 2009.



ADVISORY GROUP

Ian Bogost is a videogame designer and researcher. He is Assistant Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and Founding Partner at Persuasive Games LLC. Bogost is author of Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism (MIT Press 2006) and of Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames (MIT Press 2007), and numerous articles on videogame culture and criticism. His videogames about topics as varied as airport security, disaffected employees, the petroleum industry, and tort reform have been played by millions of people and exhibited internationally. He is currently working on a book about the Atari 2600, and a game about the politics of nutrition.

Malika Dutt is the Founder and Executive Director of Breakthrough and oversees program and operations of both partner offices located in the U.S. and India. Until December 2000, Mallika was the Program Officer for the Human Rights & Social Justice Program at the Ford Foundation’s New Delhi office. She also served as the Associate Director of the Center for Women’s Global Leadership, where she held the first US meeting to create links between human rights domestically and abroad. Mallika authored the widely-referenced With Liberty and Justice for All: Women's Human Rights in the United States. She was also the co- author of the globally utilized manual, Local Action Global Change: Learning About the Human Rights of Women and Girls. Mallika has served on several boards and committees, including the Human Rights Watch Women's Rights Project, Asia Watch, Sister Fund, Asian American Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy, Lt. Governor Committee on Public Police Relations, Committee on Sex and Law—the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, and the US NGO Coordinating Committee for the UN World Conference Against Racism. She is currently on the Board of WITNESS.

Rafael Fajardo is the founder of SWEAT, a loose collaborative that makes socially conscious video games. SWEAT has published four video games, two that comment on the gamelike nature of (il)legal human traffic at the U.S./Mexico border, and two that explore the effects of (il)licit drug agriculture in Colombia. SWEAT’s games have been exhibited internationally. Fajardo also teaches at the University of Denver where he is an associate professor of Electronic Media Arts Design and the Director of Digital Media Studies. With his colleague, Scott Leutenegger, he has overseen the creation of Squeezed, a videogame, co-sponsored by mtvU that comments on the lives of(im)migrant farm workers in the U.S. With Dr. Leutenegger and with Dr. Debra Austin he has received a multiyear grant from the National Science Foundation to explore the teaching of videogames as a holistic pedagogy in high schools.

Barry JosephDirector of the Online Leadership Program, Global Kids, Inc., holds a BA from Northwestern University and an MA in American Studies from New York University. Barry came to Global Kids in 2000 through the New Voices Fellowship of the Academy for Educational Development, funded by the Ford Foundation. He has developed innovative programs in the areas of youth-led online dialogues, video games as a form of youth media, and the educational potential of both social networks and virtual worlds, combining youth development practices with the creation of high profile digital media projects to yield 21st Century Skills. He has also worked with GK's development program to secure funding from a number of foundations and corporations. Barry served on the steering committee of the MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media and Learning initiative and his writing appeared in the Foundation's 2007 Ecology of Games volume. He has spoken at numerous conferences and published articles in a wide variety of publications. Barry is one of the cofounders of Games For Change and is a member of its National Advisory Group.

Eric Zimmerman is a game designer, entrepreneur, author, and academic who has been working in the game industry for 15 years. For nine years, Eric was the Co-Founder and Chief Design Officer of Gamelab, a game development company based in New York City that was named one of 5 "Rising Star" design firms by HOW Magazine. Gamelab's games, which include the casual game blockbuster hit Diner Dash, have won awards from the Independent Games Festival, Games for Change, ID Magazine, Art Directors Club, ARS Electronica, as well as finalist nominations in the Webby Awards, the IGDA Developers Choice Awards, and the Zeebys casual game awards. Founded in 2000, Gamelab created innovative games for broad audiences, including singleplayer and multiplayer online games, as well as games in other media both on and off the computer. Gamelab worked with partners including LEGO, HBO, VH-1, Nickelodeon, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Disney, Mattel, PlayFirst, PBS, Fisher-Price, Leapfrog, and many, many others.    Gamelab spun off two successful companies, including Gamestar Mechanic, an online site that was funded by the MacArthur Foundation that lets kids create games. Gamelab also helped create the Institute of Play, a nonprofit headed by Katie Salen that looks at the intersection of games and learning and is currently launching a school in New York City based on play as the model for learning. Eric's game design work prior to Gamelab includes the critically acclaimed SiSSYFiGHT 2000 as well as the PC games Gearheads and The Robot Club. He sits on the boards of Games for Change and The Institute of Play and the Advisory for Digital Media for Global Kids. Eric lectures and publishes extensively on games. He is the co-author with Katie Salen of Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals, the definitive textbook on game design (MIT Press, 2004). He is also the co-editor with Katie Salen of The Game Design Reader (MIT Press, 2006) and co-editor with Amy Scholder of RE:PLAY - Game Design and Game Culture (Peter Lang Press, 2003). Eric has taught courses at MIT's Comparative Media Studies Program, New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program, Parsons School of Design's MFA in Digital Technologies Program, and School of Visual Arts' Design as Author MFA Program.

Get Involved: stay up to speed by joining our low-traffic email listserv or keep checking our website blog for updates.