Lisa Forbes, Ph.D. believes play isn’t just something we do, it’s who we are when we’re most alive. She’s an Associate Clinical Professor of Counseling at the University of Colorado Denver, a Licensed Professional Counselor, and a Registered Play Therapist who helps children, students, and faculty reconnect to their creative selves through the language and the power of play.

Lisa co-founded Professors at Play, a global movement inviting educators to playfully rebel against the rigid norms of academia and bring joy, connection, and courage back into learning. Through Playposiums, playbooks, and a thriving community of playful mischief-makers, she’s helping higher education rediscover its heart.

At CU Denver, she also helps lead ThinqStudio, a faculty innovation collective testing out innovative and subversive pedagogies. She also serves as a featured speaker for the National Institute for Play, founded by play pioneer Dr. Stuart Brown. Lisa loves all things play and delights in what becomes possible when we wander beyond tradition toward the liberation of both people and practices.

David Thomas, PhD is an expert on fun. He has written books about the aesthetics of games, how to have fun at work, using AI in the classroom and co-edited two compendia of playful techniques for the higher education classroom. When not researching, inventing and having fun, David is the senior director of marketing in the College of Professional Studies at the University of Denver. He is an assistant professor, attendant, in the Department of Architecture at CU Denver and is the co-founder of the global organization Professors at Play, a group that encourages the use of playful pedagogy in higher education. His research focuses on the architecture of fun, delving into the deep human connection created by play, and argues for the ability of fun to transform our daily lives.

Mia Sundstrom is the Director for Play Transformation at the National Institute for Play (NIFP) and the Granddaughter of NIFPLAYfounder and play expert, Dr. Stuart Brown. Mia also works part-time for the Office of the Chancellor at the University of Denver as a project manager for character education.  

Mia has reached global audiences through her speaking engagements, including recent presentations at Aspen Ideas and the World Expo in Osaka, Japan. She has appeared on podcasts, delivered keynotes, led workshops, and consulted with schools and organizations to leverage the power of play to build strengths of character, enhance learning, improve leadership, strengthen community, and unlock innovation.  

Mia was previously an NCAA D1 assistant coach for the University of Denver's top 10 gymnastics team. Before coaching, she was a student-athlete and captain for Denver Gymnastics, helping lead the program to a historic final four appearance while earning two degrees: a master’s in public policy ('23) and a bachelor’s in business information and Analytics ('21). 

As Dr. Stuart Brown’s granddaughter, Mia has chosen a career trajectory to enliven his legacy and build upon the incredible work he’s contributed to the science and application of play. 

Adam has spent the past decade dedicated to exploring the intersections of innovation, technology, and the idea of a regenerative circular economy. He enjoys creating engaging workshops that challenge participants to acquire and apply new knowledge through hands-on experiences.

As a Senior Lecturer in Entrepreneurship at the University of Exeter Business School, Adam serves as academic lead on two cutting-edge innovation spaces, the Skydeck and the CQ, where students can experience the power of innovation and entrepreneurship first-hand.

Adam co-founded InnoPlay, which leverages the power of play and design to drive innovation in education and beyond, and Regenovate, a new type of agency that helps organisations build their capacity for regenerative growth.

Maarten has a PhD in medical biology and over the last 5 years has become passionate about strengthening the link between learning and joy through play. As a senior lecturer at the Medical School at the University of Exeter, Maarten integrated insights in the neuroscience of play and design thinking with his academic practice – which has been celebrated by receiving and Educational Incubator Fellowship, the Personal Tutor of the Year Award (2023) and The Areus Award for Most Inspirational Teacher (2024).

Furthermore, Maarten has co-lead the Kinder Exeter Festival and lead the Festival of Compassion to co-create prosocial spaces promoting compassion and playfulness - thereby enabling creative and innovative thinking.

Together with Adam Lusby, Maarten has co-founded InnoPlay to enable individual and institutional innovation through design, play, story – and joy!

Alison James is a UK National Teaching Fellow, Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in the UK and Professor Emerita of the University of Winchester. During her career she has held numerous roles in universities, spanning the twin aspects of teaching and learning and quality and standards. Her specialist interest lies in the use of alternative and innovative pedagogies in creative arts education and across the disciplines. Some of these approaches were published in Engaging Imagination: helping students become creative and reflective thinkers, co-authored with Professor Stephen Brookfield (2014).

Throughout much of her career she has had a particular interest in the use of play and playfulness in higher education and co-edited a range of open source and educational publications with Professor Chrissi Nerantzi of Leeds University.  Of these publications, the international collection The Power of Play in Higher Education: Creativity in Tertiary Learning (2019) has been downloaded more than 77,000 times worldwide.

In 2019 Alison received funding from the Imagination Lab Foundation, a Swiss-based, independent, and not-for-profit supporter of scholarship which brings together the disciplines of management, art, science, imagination, and play. With this support she conducted a three year investigation into the use, perceptions, and value of play in higher education. In 2024 Alison extended this work to produce PLAYI - a study looking at how playful learning and genAI are being combined in higher education.

Alison is a trained LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® facilitator and delivers online courses in facilitator training with the Danish consultancy Inthrface. She has done extensive work with this method in staff and educational development, course design and with students & staff at undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral level.

Since 2020 Alison has worked independently as an academic adviser, doctoral examiner, book reviewer, consultant and coach. All of these activities draw on her expertise in creative and playful pedagogy, as well as her knowledge and experience of higher education delivery.

Christopher Jeansonne is a Senior Lecturer in the Communication and Media Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He promotes gameful learning as a holistic approach to creating effective and engaging educational experiences for both students and faculty; his current project, “200-Year-Old Vampires: Reflecting on Motion Picture History”, uses a tabletop roleplaying framework for learning about the history of photographic images and cinema. Chris also does research and interpretive analysis of popular culture in film, TV, comics and games, with a particular focus on transmedial works and adaptations; he has published on film and superheroes, and is the co-author (with Maurice Suckling) of the forthcoming book War of the Ring as Adaptation: What To Do With The Time Given To Us? Prior to his work in academia, Chris was a filmmaker working on both commercial and independent film projects, and was the founder and chair of an award-winning media arts program at The Willow School in New Orleans.

BIO: Dr. Robin Mello (she/her) is a Professor of Theatre at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her teaching and research focus is on human-centered creative practice, communicating science, dramaturging and devising new works of theatre based on community histories.

She is the founding director of UWM’s thriving K – 12 Theatre Education Program. Her recent creative arts projects include being an embedded artist at the Manfred Olsen Platnetarium, Welcome Table! with Black Arts, MKE and Odyssey in the Sky at the Olson Planetarium. Her recent original theatre works include HEART OF GOLD NEW VAUDEVILLE, WOMEN’S VOICES/WOMEN’S WORK, SPINNING TALES, CINDERELLA 30,000, A COSMIC WEB, and ORPHAN TRAIN (a devised piece about the lived experience of the Orphan Train Movement, 1853-1929). In 2025 she directed UWM’s production of The Ballad of Maria Marten, which boasted a sold-out run.

Currently, she has been collaborating with the directors of the Innoplay Laboratory, Creative Quad, University of Exeter, UK to develop workshops and classroom practices that support prosocial innovation pedagogies. Other research projects include Tale of Scale, Sharing Wisconsin the Sky: Indigenous Voices, and Star Stories—Communicating the Universe (STE(A)M projects with collaborator Dr. Jean Creighton, Director of the Manfred Olson Planetarium).

Robin’s dynamic approach also influenced The Penelope Project, where she contributed as actor, dramaturge, and program evaluator. She details this experience in The Penelope Project: An Arts-Based Odyssey (2016). Mello’s work has been supported by a wide range of grants and commissions including: ArtsEco, CAMPAC, Carnegie Foundation’s Teachers for a New Era, Ezra J. Keats Foundation, Little Red Schoolhouse Project, NASA’s Wisconsin Space Science Consortium, National Storytelling Network, National Women’s Hall of Fame, New England Touring Arts Program, New England Touring Artist Program, Maine Touring Artists Program, US State Department, UWM Office of Research & Sponsored Programs, University System of Wisconsin, Very Special Arts – Americans for the Arts, Wisconsin Arts, and the Wisconsin Humanities Council.