CO-EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Caroline Murphy, or Caro, is a game and interactive experience designer. Currently a Visiting Associate Professor at Northeastern University, Caro's career includes a notable tenure as Immersive Experience Director for Disney's Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser. Caro serves as Executive Creative Director of Incantrix Productions, crafting independent interactive experiences globally and collaborating with writers and designers worldwide. With a rich background in education, they have taught everywhere from leading institutions such as Harvard and MIT to small nonprofits arts organizations targeting children in underserved communities. They are also proud of their ten-year leadership of BostonFIG, fostering the next generation of game creators.

CO-EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Celia Pearce is an award-winning game designer, artist, curator, author, teacher, and serial instigator. She is a full Professor at Northeastern University, and is co-founder and Festival Chair of IndieCade. Her games have been featured at Come Out & Play, Different Games, Incubate, Smithsonian Indie Arcade, and BostonFIG, where here game eBee received the award for most Innovative Tabletop Game. Her publications include Communities of Play (MIT) and Meet Me at the Fair: A World’s Fair Reader (ETC/CMU Press). Her current research and creative practice builds on her pre-academia career as an experience designer for theme parks and is focused on the intersection between game design, live action roleplaying and theatre.

SECRETARY
Evan Torner defended his dissertation on race representation in East German genre cinema at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2013, and spent 2013-2014 at Grinnell College as an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow. He has published several articles pertaining to East Germany, critical race theory, DEFA Indianerfilme, science-fiction, transnational genre cinema, and game studies, as well as co-edited several books. His volume Immersive Gameplay: Essays on Role-Playing and Participatory Media co-edited with William J. White was published with McFarland Publishing in 2012, and he is one of the founding editors of the Analog Game Studies journal (http://analoggamestudies.org). His major projects underway include the Handbook of East German Cinema: The DEFA Legacy, co-edited with Henning Wrage and under contract with Walter De Gruyter, and a monograph entitled A Century and Beyond: Critical Readings of German Science-Fiction Cinema.

BOARD CHAIR

Sam is an award winning designer of narrative games, including Forsooth! (Game Chef Winner) and Room at the Top (IndieCade Official Selection). He is also Co-founder of Extra Ludic, a consultancy that develops impactful games for organizations at the highest levels of government and civil society. He studied writing and theater at Emerson College and currently teaches game design at Northeastern University.

BOARD MEMBER

Kellian Adams Pletcher is the founder and mastermind of Green Door Labs, a company that works with informal education organizations to create immersive, interactive, game-based experiences. Her work includes many games with museums and nonprofits including Murder at the Met with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The League of Extraordinary Bloggers with the Association of Children’s Museums and the Mystery of the Megatherium Club with the Smithsonian Archives. Green Door Labs has built hundreds of games with its location-based game engine, the Edventure Builder and most recently Kellian has been busy creating and producing immersive theater productions and collaborations like Save the Munbax and Club Drosselmeyer.

BOARD MEMBER

Regine Vital (she/her/hers) is Manager of Curriculum & Instruction at the Huntington Theatre Co, and an actor/ scholar/ educator/ writer/ theatre-maker/ storyteller from Somerville, MA. She received her BA in English and History from Boston University and her MA in English Literature and Creative Writing from UMass Boston. She recently spent time in the UK studying Early Modern English Drama and Texts, focusing on Shakespeare, at King’s College London and Shakespeare’s Globe. She previously worked at the Huntington as a Box Office Representative in Ticketing Services, and as a Text Coach for the Education Department’s Summer Theatre Institute with Codman Academy. As an actor, she has appeared in many projects with several Boston area theatre companies, including Central Square Theatre, Asian American Playwright’s Collective, Flat Earth Theatre, Open Theatre Project, HUB Theatre Company, Gloucester Stage Company, TC2 Theatre Company, and Also Known As Theatre. When she isn’t telling stories on stage or talking too much about Shakespeare, Regine loves a good book, a good show, a good dance, and/or a great chat with great friends. Merde, folks!

BOARD MEMBER

Kat Jones is a queer, Latina game designer, organizer, and scholar. She has extensive experience with research and teaching in the fields of Sociology as well as Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Jones has written and co-authored a wide range of live-action scenarios including Glitzy Nails in #Feminism, Revived: A Support Group for the Partially Deceased, and her recent entry to the Queer Gaymes anthology, Glitter Pits, which was awarded Best Intersectional Game Involving Experiences of Queer People of Color. Jones was one of the organizers of the 2017 US run of Just a Little Lovin’. She has helped organize several live-action events at community art spaces and has run her games at conferences and conventions.

BOARD MEMBER

Nick O’Leary is a New York based director of theater and live events. Born and raised in New England, he has developed new work with The American Repertory Theater (MA), Guerilla Opera (MA), Actors Theatre of Louisville (KY), The Flea Theater (NY), The Museum of the Moving Image (NY), Exquisite Corpse Company (NY), The 24 Hour Plays (NY), Dacha Theatre (WA), Sinking Ship Creations (NY), as a guest artist at Dartmouth College (NH), and more. Nick is also a designer and creator of games and interactive experiences. His work with Tiltfactor Laboratory has focused on developing games and live interactive experiences designed to effect social change, combat gender bias, and facilitate the sourcing and organization of archival images for public institutions.

BOARD MEMBER

Athena Z Peters is a designer and producer who started in her passions of games and theater as a child. She has a BFA in Directing Theater and has spent fifteen years working in the video games industry at WB Games and many others. She left that industry to open Adventure Pub in Arlington, MA which was a restaurant/board game pub and event space that closed due to COVID-19. Then she got back oh the horse only to discover it was a Rainbow Unicorn Games! She is the co-owner of Incantrix Productions and currently developing the digital version of the Romancing Jan IP and world.