Professor Game Podcast | Rob Alvarez Bucholska chats with gamification gurus, experts and practitioners about education Rob Alvarez

Corey Hord is currently employed with Mondelēz International (Oreo, Chip Ahoy!, Ritz, Sour Patch Kids, Swedish Fish, Clif Bar, and beyond) as an Operational Excellence professional implementing the company’s integrated Lean Six Sigma program across the United States. Corey has over a decade of operations experience (Craft Brew Alliance, Anheuser-Busch, BJC HealthCare, Mondelēz International) with the bulk of his career in consumer packaged goods (CPG). Corey’s education consists of a Master of Business Administration from Webster University and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Kentucky. Outside his formal education, Corey holds a green belt certification in Lean Six Sigma, is a trained facilitator of LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® and is a CrossFit® Level 1 trainer. Corey started his own consultancy in 2022 called The Methods Company where his mission is to solve problems with the world's best methodologies through workshops and consulting. Corey’s trained facilitator credential with LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® comes alongside his decade-plus experience with Lean and Six Sigma and Agile methodologies and is the makeup of his core disciplines offered through his consultancy.

Victoria Ichizli-Bartels is a writer, coach, and consultant with a background in semiconductor physics, electronic engineering (with a Ph.D.), information technology, and business development. While being a non-gamer in the traditional sense, Victoria came up with the term Self-Gamification, a gameful and playful self-help approach bringing anthropology, kaizen, and gamification-based methods together to increase the quality of life. She approaches all areas of her life this way. Due to the fun she has while turning everything in her life into games, Victoria intends never to stop designing and playing them. Inspired by a tip from friends, she now likes to call herself a “life gamer.” Victoria is the author of more than twenty books, eleven of which are on turning life into fun games and living gamefully. She is also the instructor of two online courses on the topic. Victoria was born and grew up in Moldova, lived in Germany for twelve years, and since 2008, has lived in Aalborg, Denmark, with her husband and two children.

Sarah Le-Fevre is a Games-based Learning design and delivery professional and certified Lego® Serious Play® Facilitator.  After tiring of creating programs for blue-chip clients that focused almost solely on growth and profit, Sarah made the decision to keep the same audience but shift the focus to learning around sustainability, human flourishing and tackling systemic wicked problems. With a focus on experiential learning, specifically games and learning in nature, Sarah specializes in creating programs which allow learners time to reflect and create their own learning about complex systemic issues and is in the process of writing a book about a Systems Practice approach to learning design for organizational change. Her other main pre-occupation at the moment is managing the Kickstarter for the Museum of Impossible Objects card deck – and working on multiple exciting collaborations for the Museum. Sarah also runs a bi-monthly online magazine ‘Ludogogy’, which explores games-based learning, gamification, and gameful and playful design.  Sarah can be contacted at sarah [at] ludogogy [dot] co [dot] uk (or search LinkedIn for Sarah Le-Fevre, with a hyphen) and you can visit the magazine at ludogogy.co.uk

Scott Provence is an award-winning instructional designer, author, and speaker. His print, instructor-led, and web-based curricula have been delivered throughout the world, and his sales and customer service trainees have gone on to receive multiple industry awards for their work. Scott has over a decade of Instructional Design experience, as well as five years of experience in VP and senior leadership roles. His book on training gamification, Fail to Learn, was a #1 Amazon Hot New Release. Check out what he's up to next at scottprovence.com.

Mike Washburn is an educator, community builder, content creator from Barrie, Ontario, Canada. He currently serves as the Director of Learning and Development for Logics Academy, a STEM, Robotics and Learning Experience Design company based in Toronto, Ontario. As a former computer science teacher, Mike created a custom-made curriculum using elements of game design and game-based learning culminating in a year-long Grade 8 project called the “Game Design Challenge” which asked students to design and create every aspect of their very own video game. Since then, Mike has worked with leading EdTech organizations to connect educators through community building and professional learning, enabling them to share their passions and knowledge. Mike was the co-host of the hit education podcast OnEducation, and hosted and produced the official Minecraft: Education Edition podcast, and Real Time 3D in Education podcast in collaboration with Epic Games. With almost 500,000 career podcast downloads, Mike is a standout voice for technology in education. Mike has written for EdSurge and has been a notable, featured, or keynote speaker at conferences across North America such as ISTE and FETC.

Mai P. Trinh is an Assistant Professor in Leadership and Interdisciplinary Studies at Arizona State University. Her scholarly works empower people to become the best leaders they can be so that we can build a more equitable and equal world together. From the top down, she combines complex adaptive systems science with agent-based modeling to reveal systemic patterns of inequalities, examine the effectiveness of plausible solutions, and recommend leadership actions to alleviate equity and equality. From the bottom up, she uses experiential learning theory to help leaders develop key competencies and improve leadership training and education. Her works serve to advance two of the United Nations' sustainable development goals, #10 “Reduced inequalities” and #5 “Gender equality.” Professor Trinh has long been using game-based learning and gamification to help her students learn effectively. She has published innovative experiential methods to develop leadership competencies such as using mobile app games to improve learning flexibility and using gamification to foster quantitative literacy skills. Her latest workshop on applying gamification in  management education was a finalist for the Best Professional Development Workshop Award at the 2022 Academy of Management annual conference.