At LifeLab Studios, we’ve brought together learning scientists, educators, entertainment industry game designers, and platform engineers, in a research-based studio where we iterate innovations to uncover the best way to unlock human potential.Our connected growth platform, Journey.do, leverages evidence-based principles of how people learn, with the best aspects of social connection and relationship, and the power of personal story, to create an entirely new kind of platform for education. Here learners connect, grow, apply and inspire one another, as they share out their stories of growth, chart their own path through topics (our content or yours), and level up to earn micro-credentials or credits. In Journey.do learners are seen, valued and validated for the great work they do.Journey.do currently powers growth in sectors including K-12 schools, University courses, Professional Development, Juvenile Detention, Faith-based schools, churches, and temples. While we love to power others' curriculum and goals, we also design and offer multiple collections of growth including SEL/Whole Learner, Resilience, Recovery, Career Readiness, Life Skills, Wellness, Meditation, Athletes of Character, Preparing Future Teachers, STEM Mio, Human Trafficking Awareness (to teachers across multiple states), and personal growth across the lifespan.

I operate from the optimistic belief that everyone can and wants to do great things. Innovation isn't a 'technological fix for broken people', and instead serves to augment the natural potential in each of us, with the real innovation coming from within the person. As a Learning Scientist, my work involves the design, curricula, and research of theoretically-grounded innovations for personal growth and societal impact. I design platforms and game-infused learning to unlock human potential within an ecosystem of supporting ideas, meaningful relationships, digital experiences, and real-world practice. We've cultivated these ideas within our connected growth platform, Journey.Do. The goal is to reshape the future of learning by blending formal and informal learning opportunities, by making growth, relationship and impact available to anyone, anywhere, anytime. My work has a strong emphasis on collaborating with underrepresented and challenged populations, including human trafficking education, urban teacher recruitment & retention, sobriety & wellness, faith & spirituality, character development, and positive change for youth in juvenile detention. I am inspired by working with at-risk youth, to uncover what drives them, the opportunities they seek, and co-creating growth platform invitations they can engage to create positive pathways in their lives. I am director of the NSF-funded program, STEM Mio, creating college and career STEM pathways for Latino youth, and related series on VME Spanish Public Television. I have also collaborated with Intel to create game-infused learning platforms taking digital literacy experiences to women in African countries to pursue entrepreneurial goals. I am currently working with youth in detention and on probation to create personalized learning trajectories tailored to their risks and needs, within our ThriveCast connected growth platform, to build life skills, socio-emotional growth, and positive future pathways.

As director of Quest2Teach, (www.Quest2Teach.org), I created a suite of 3D immersive game curricula and community systems for pre-service and in-service teachers with the goal to attract, prepare, support and retain highly effective educators. Quest2Teach immerses pre-service and professional teachers in authentic role-playing narratives, unified over time and experiences by a real-world professional network, which together serve to bridge between educational theory and its practice in the field. In these immersive worlds, learners create their professional avatar, play out roles, solve authentic problems, fail safely, and see the impact of their individual decisions and trajectories, while gaining experience and fluency in these theories-in-action. Players’ endeavors in the game then appear on their network homepage to evolve their real-world identity across semesters and PD, through their achievements, badging, reflections, and extensions into the field, within a supportive community of practice. The program is the first of its kind in teacher education, and we have found significant results in our students’ learning, engagement, fluency, identity as a professional, confidence in their future teaching, and deeper commitment to teaching. Quest2Teach was selected by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center (Sesame Workshop) to be featured in their documentary series of the top 5 innovations in teacher education. To see Q2T in context, you can watch their short film here:http://www.gamesandlearning.org/2014/10/14/game-based-approach-to-teacher-education-at-asu-builds-essential-skills www.quest2teach.org

Designed curricula, research, and implementations for Quest Atlantis and Atlantis Remixed, international learning and teaching projects that use 3D multi-user environments to immerse children, ages 9-16, in educational tasks as part of their teacher-led classroom curricula in Science and Language Arts.

Taught learning theory courses to graduate students, and educational psychology courses to undergraduates in the IU School of Education as part of their graduate school and teacher preparation program.