About

CEO/Director of Design

Dr. Karen (Kat) Schrier is an Associate Professor, Director of the Play Innovation Lab, and Director of the Games and Emerging Media program at Marist College. She is the author of We the Gamers: How Games Teach Ethics & Civics, published by Oxford University Press (2021), and Knowledge Games, published by Johns Hopkins University Press (2016). She has previously edited two book series, Ethics and Game Design and Learning, Education, & Games. She was a Belfer Fellow with the ADL’s Center for Technology & Society, and she is co-PI for a Templeton Grant on designing VR games for empathy. Prior to joining the Marist College faculty, she worked as a media producer at Scholastic, Nickelodeon, and BrainPOP. She has a doctorate from Columbia University, a master’s from MIT, and a bachelor’s from Amherst College.

CFO/Director of Research

Dr. David Shaenfield is a Senior Lecturer and the Director of Critical Thinking at Sacred Heart University. He researches adolescent and adult development and focuses on how development occurs while engaging in collaborative technologically-mediated activities, like gaming. He has been conducting research in school-based and informal learning settings for the past 20 years. He is a co-PI on NSF s-STEM grant and a Davis Educational Foundation grant. He developed and runs annual workshops on critical thinking and leads Sacred Heart’s Critical Thinking Across the Curriculum Program. Prior to becoming a researcher and professor, Dr. Shaenfield worked as a programmer and project manager National Instruments. He has degrees from the University of Texas at Austin (B.S.) and Columbia University (M.S./Ph.D.).