Speakers
There will be four speaker periods during PLAYfest. Below are some offerings that will be occurring!
Session 1: Joy
Kathlene Campbell
Kathlene Campbell is the Dean of Education at the University of St. Thomas where she oversees the departments of educational leadership, special education, and teacher education as well as the charter school authorizing unit. Dr. Campbell’s multifaceted experience as a classroom teacher, community college and state college professor, state college interim dean, university instructor and supervisor, and non-profit consultant have shaped all of her strategic and scholarly pursuits. She holds a B.A. in Elementary Education and M.Ed. in Early Childhood Intervention and Family Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from The University of Texas at Austin.
Carly Ciarrocchi
Carly Ciarrocchi is a host, writer/creator and morning enthusiast working primarily in children's media. After five years as a host/writer for Sprout's live preschool TV show Sunny Side Up, she went on to host Snug’s House and The Big Fun Crafty Show (Universal Kids). All three shows have earned a combined total of five Daytime Emmy nominations. As a musician, she's written tunes for Sprout/Universal Kids and is a vocalist/songwriter on Tim Kubart's Grammy Award-winning children’s album HOME. Carly hosts the award-winning improv-comedy podcast Don't Break the Rules and is mid-production as co-creator/co-host of a new original preschool podcast, both with Pinna Audio. In March, she hosted the 2020 LEGO Idea Conference in Denmark, helping the team pivot the project to a livestream experience due to COVID-19. As a performer and content creator, she meets her audience where they are and keeps things just the right amount of weird. Her work combines authenticity, resilience, curriculum and comedy. Her newest TV project, a science show for elementary age kids called Weird But True!, premieres on Disney+ via National Geographic Kids on 8/14.
Sara Hendren
Sara Hendren is an artist, design researcher, and writer who teaches design for disability at Olin College of Engineering. Her book, What Can A Body Do? How We Meet the Built World, comes out on August 18—a look at the deep creativity and urgency found where disability meets design, with wisdom and ideas for building a better world for all of us. Sara's work has been exhibited widely and is held in the permanent collections at MoMA and the Cooper Hewitt; her writing and design work have been featured in The New York Times, Fast Company, and on NPR; and she has been a fellow at New America and the Carey Institute for Global Good. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband and children.
Kakani Katija
Originally an Aerospace Engineer, Kakani Katija received her Ph.D. in Bioengineering at the California Institute of Technology specializing in biological fluid mechanics and in situ imaging methods. As a Bioengineer, Katija is dedicated to developing underwater technologies to better observe biological and physical processes where they happen in the ocean. Her research and engineering development efforts have contributed to our understanding of nutrient cycling and biologically induced mixing of the ocean, ecomechanics of gelatinous and soft-bodied invertebrates in deep-sea environments, and bioinspired engineering design. She is currently a Principal Engineer at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute where she leads the Bioinspiration Lab. Katija and members of her team develop tools and platforms that include (1) advanced imaging tools (DeepPIV and EyeRIS) to measure biological-physical interactions in the ocean, (2) electronics tagging packages (ITAG) to deduce organism behavioral response to a changing environment, and (3) autonomous underwater vehicles using stereo tracking to observe marine animals in midwater for long durations. A former ice dancer and member of the U.S. International Figure Skating Team, Katija is an active scientific diver, conducting field expeditions in various locations around the world using technologies that she and her team have developed.
Sameh Wadi
Sameh Wadi is a renowned chef, restaurateur, cookbook author, and spice connoisseur.
After opening Saffron--a fine dining Middle Eastern restaurant--in 2007, Sameh quickly became known throughout the Twin Cities and beyond for his playful and delicious take on global flavors, heavily influenced by his Palestinian roots.
Sameh is now Chef/Owner of Twin Cities mainstays World Street Kitchen (globally influenced street food), Milkjam Creamery (chef-driven ice cream), and Grand Catch (viet-cajun seafood boils). He feels strongly that if something doesn’t bring you happiness, it isn’t worth your time—which is why he spends many hours per week looking at dog videos on Instagram.
Cynthia Weitzel
Cynthia Weitzel is a Deaf visual artist who since 2011 has maintained a year-round studio at the Anderson Center at Tower View in Red Wing, Minnesota, Weitzel’s work involves the continuum of visual art media with primary focus on themes relating to the Deaf life experience. She attended Gallaudet University and University of Minnesota before obtaining her BBA in business management with studio fine art minor from Austin Peay State University. In collaboration with the Anderson Center she founded the interdisciplinary Deaf Artists Residency program supported primarily by ArtWorks Grants (2014, 2016, 2018 And 2020) from the National Endowment for the Arts. And most recently was selected by the Alliance of Artist Communities to receive the 2018-2019 Diversity & Leadership Fellowship funded by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
Session 2: Whimsy
Dawn Danby
Dawn Danby is co-founder of Spherical, a strategic design and integrative research studio mapping and supporting projects healing Earth’s living systems. Spherical offers ontological repair services and cosmovision remediation.
Dawn spent ten years initiating and leading Autodesk’s sustainable design initiatives, focusing on the development and use of advanced tech for managing the ecological and human impact of design and engineering decisions. She has directed design research programs across materials, manufacturing, agriculture, and the built environment. Dawn began her career as an industrial designer focused on ecological systems. She co-authored the bestselling Worldchanging: A User’s Guide to the 21st Century, and was recognized by Fast Company as one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business. She has a secret identity as a widely published women’s health medical illustrator.
Dawn is currently learning to be a crisis-homeschool second-grade art teacher parent in Oakland, California.
Jose Gomez-Marquez
Jose Gomez-Marquez directs medical technology design at Little Devices @ MIT and is a co-founder of MakerHealth which creates medical makerspace systems in hospitals and communities around the country. He is co-developer of the MEDIKit and Ampli platforms, a series of design building blocks that empower doctors and nurses to invent their own medical technologies. Other projects include crowdsourced diagnostics, paper microfluidics, and affordable diagnostics for infectious diseases. Jose has served on the EU’s Science Against Poverty Taskforce and has participated as an expert advisor on President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Jose was selected to Technology Review’s TR35, which also named him Humanitarian of the Year. In 2011 he was named a TED Fellow. Originally from Honduras, he currently lives in Boston, Massachusetts.
Kate Sigel
Kate Sigel originates from Chicago, Illinois and attended Harrington College of Design where she received her bachelor of fine arts in interior design. After realizing that wasn’t her calling, she enjoyed working in a guest-facing environment for many years and (fusing together her passion for design and her restaurant experience) decided to attend pastry school. She attended the French Pastry School in Chicago and became completely enamored.
Since graduation, Kate has worked at Bistro 110 (which received the Bib Gourmand), Rush, Huxley Wallace, and Conversation restaurant at the Thompson Seattle, and she has assisted with the openings of Chez Moi, Great State Burgers, Bar Noroeste, and most heavily, Saint Helens. Over the years, Kate also started her own businesses, Kate’s Cakes Chicago and Sweet Tooth Cake Co. Mostly recently, she was tapped to join QED Hospitality as their Executive Pastry Chef for Thompson Hotel Nashville. Kate delights guests with her creativity and nod to nostalgia and makes her whimsical style and playful flavor combinations evident in her desserts.
Twin Cities Trapeze Center
Twin Cities Trapeze Center is an inclusive, all-ages and abilities circus school in St. Paul, MN. We coach recreational Flying Trapeze and circus classes. Our performance team has entertained and amazed all over the midwest, including the Science Museum of MN, MN Children's Museum and the MN State Fair.
Janella Watson
Janella Watson is an educational, museum and children's media consultant, with expertise in creativity, play and experiential learning. Drawing on more than 20 years of work as a researcher and practitioner in children’s museums and science centers, she is renowned for creating curriculum, media content, programs, exhibits and experiences that center equity and spark joy, learning and whole family engagement. Her current clients and partners include Brown University’s Causality and Mind Lab, Nucleus Education, Playful Learning Lab at University of St. Thomas, Sesame Workshop, and WGBH Education. Janella lives, works and plays in Providence, RI with her husband and her curious and kind seven-year old.
Session 3: New Friends
Sherry Huss
Sherry Huss is Co-founder of Maker Faire and a major advocate of “all things maker” in the global community. A former Vice President of Maker Media, her vision and passion have helped spark the maker movement and she has been instrumental in growing the Make: brand within the maker ecosystem. Sherry has recently joined The Freeman Company team as Innovator-in-Residence and is working on creating community and building tribes inside and outside the company. She is a founding member of LIVE Labs Studio, focusing on the future of LIVE, and is one of the founders of a new project, Decameron Row, "Perhaps the most ambitious new online arts project to emerge so far during COVID-19 and sheltering in place." She has over 30 years of technology marketing, management and event experience and has held senior management positions at MediaLive International, Key3Media, Ziff-Davis and Softbank.
As a Forbes, Forty over 40 Honoree, a 2019 & 2018 Hackaday Prize Judge, and Reinvented's Advisor of the Year, she is passionate about making and the Maker community, and is an entrepreneur, event strategist, marketing maven, innovator, proven leader, community organizer and consultant who serves on advisory boards for: Reinvented, (a nonprofit organization that aspires to break barriers and aid the movement to get more girls involved in STEM by creating the nation's first print magazine for women in STEM), Collab (a Fabrication Lab, Innovation Studio and Do Tank in NYC), Future Food Institute (an Italian-based non-profit, opening an office in San Francisco) with global horizons that aims to build a more equitable world through enlightening a world-class breed of innovators, boosting entrepreneurial potential and improving agri-food expertise and tradition); 180 Studios (North Bay’s Community Makerspace focused on workforce development, community and making for all ages); and Sonoma Family Meal (Sonoma County's Emergency Food Network delivering chef made meals to families in need).
Mary Robinette Kowal
Mary Robinette Kowal is the author of The Glamourist Histories series, Ghost Talkers, and the Lady Astronaut series. She’s the President of SFWA, part of the award-winning podcast Writing Excuses and has received the Astounding Award for Best New Writer, four Hugo awards, the Nebula and Locus awards. Her stories appear in Asimov’s, Uncanny, and several Year’s Best anthologies. Mary Robinette, a professional puppeteer, also performs as a voice actor (SAG/AFTRA), recording fiction for authors including Seanan McGuire, Cory Doctorow, and John Scalzi. She lives in Nashville with her husband Rob and over a dozen manual typewriters. Visit maryrobinettekowal.com
Damian Kulash
Damian Kulash, Jr. is an artist, musician, filmmaker, and the frontman for the polymath rock group OK Go. He’s directed the band’s long string of boundary-pushing music videos, racking up more than 300 million views online. They’ve danced in zero gravity and on treadmills, they’ve built a warehouse-sized Rube Goldberg machine to run in sync with a song, and they’ve choreographed hundreds of explosions filmed in just a few seconds. Damian has received the Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award for Visual Art, a Grammy, three MTV VMA’s, twenty-one Cannes Lions, three Webby Awards, and has had his work presented at The Guggenheim, MoCA, LACMA, The Hirschhorn, The Hammer Museum, and Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture.
Damian graduated magna cum laude from Brown University in 1998. He’s written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and Rolling Stone, and testified before the US Congress in support of Net Neutrality. He serenaded Barack Obama at his 50th birthday party, appeared on the Simpsons, and Animal from The Muppets once played the drums in his garage. He lives and works in Los Angeles.
Stefanie Sobelle
Stefanie Sobelle is a professor, writer, editor, dramaturg, and curator/ producer whose projects focus on the spaces of stories and the stories spaces tell. Her book, A Building is a Book (forthcoming from Oxford University Press), looks at the architecture in and of American literature from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Her two new scholarly projects examine architectural waste and the imaginary of the American desert in modernist culture. She collaborated with her brother, theater artist Geoff Sobelle, on an award-winning production titled HOME about the memories of houses, which was commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) and that premiered in fall 2017. HOME was touring domestically and internationally until the great lockdown of 2020, at which point Stefanie turned to co-producing and curating Decameron Row, a work of digital architecture that houses 100 one-minute videos by artists around the world, documenting their lives under quarantine. What holds these disparate projects together is an interest in finding new forms of community when we cannot find ourselves at home in the built environments that we inhabit
Stefanie has written about contemporary literature and art for Bookforum, The Financial Times, BOMB, Jacket 2, The Daily Star, Words Without Borders, The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Los Angeles Review of Books, and other venues. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University and her B.A. from Stanford University and is currently an Associate Professor at Gettysburg College, a Visiting Associate Professor at the California Institute of Technology, and the Art & Architecture Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB).
Buffy Smith
Buffy Smith, Ph.D. is a sociologist, educator, and consultant. She is the founding associate dean of Dougherty Family College and professor of Sociology at the University of St. Thomas. She earned her B.A. in Sociology at Marquette University and a M.S. and Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The courses she teaches include the First-Year College Experience Seminar, Social Problems, Race & Ethnicity, Social Stratification, and the Sociology Senior Seminar. She was an Association for the Study of Higher Education /Lumina Fellow in 2003. Dr. Smith’s primary research interests include examining racial and class disparities within the higher education system. She also writes on policy issues dealing with mentoring, access, retention, equity, and diversity in higher education. She has over 15 years of experience researching how colleges and universities can assist underserved students with understanding and navigating the institutional culture of higher education in order to achieve academic success. Dr. Smith has received several awards and grants that recognize her research on diversity issues in higher education. Dr. Smith’s publications include book chapters and articles featured in research and practice oriented journals such as African –American Research Perspectives and Equity & Excellence in Education. In addition, she is the author of the book, Mentoring At-Risk Students through the Hidden Curriculum of Higher Education. She can be reached via email at bsmith@stthomas.edu.
Session 4: Surprise
Pablo Breuer
Dr. Pablo Breuer is currently a Principal Director for Applied Cyber Intelligence at Accenture Federal Services. He is a 22 year veteran of the U.S. Navy with tours including military director of US Special Operations Command Donovan Group and senior military advisor and innovation officer to SOFWERX, the National Security Agency, and U.S. Cyber Command as well as being the Director of C4 at U.S. Naval Force Central Command.
Pablo has been faculty at the Naval Postgraduate School, National University, California State University Monterey Bay, as well as a Visiting Scientist at Carnegie Mellon CERT/SEI. He is a founder and vice director of the Cognitive Security Collaborative, a co-founder and board member of The Diana Initiative, and is on the staff for Security BSides Las Vegas.
Debbie Chachra
Dr. Debbie Chachra is a Professor of Engineering at Olin College, where she was one of the early faculty. She is currently at work on a book about our shared infrastructural systems, to be published by Riverhead Books and which is supported by a grant from the Sloan Foundation. Her other research interests include engineering education, with a particular emphasis on the undergraduate student experience (for which she received an NSF CAREER Award) and biological materials, ranging from plastic made by bees to how osteoporosis changes the strength of bone. She authors a regular column, “Reinvention”, for the American Society of Engineering Education’s Prism magazine, and her writing has appeared in outlets including Nature, online at the Atlantic and the Guardian, and in the comic book Bitch Planet. Prior to joining the faculty at Olin College, she was a postdoctoral associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and she earned her doctorate, as well as her master’s and undergraduate engineering degree, at the University of Toronto.
Rachel Gehlhar
Rachel Gehlhar is from Hager City, WI and currently resides in Pasadena, CA where she is starting her 5th year as a PhD student at Caltech studying Mechanical Engineering. Here she studies how to control the knee and ankle of a robotic prosthetic leg. She graduated with her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of St. Thomas in 2016. While at St. Thomas, Rachel worked on quantifying the quality of the smell of black truffles for the restaurant team of Alinea in Chicago. In addition to her interest in robotics and controls, Rachel enjoys cooking, hiking, biking, making homemade gifts, spending time with friends and family, and sculpting 3D cakes.
David Kwong
With his expertise in puzzles and illusions, David Kwong delights and challenges audiences around the world with his intellectual brand of magic.
A veteran “cruciverbalist” (crossword puzzle constructor), Kwong creates puzzles for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Wall Street Journal.
Kwong is the puzzle and secret code consultant for the hit NBC show Blindspot. He was the head magic consultant on the 2013 worldwide hit film Now You See Me. Other films Kwong has worked on include The Imitation Game, Ant-Man, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, and The Magnificent 7.
In his book Spellbound: Seven Principles of Illusion to Gain Influence, Captivate Audiences, and Unlock the Secrets of Success, Kwong shows us how to bridge the gap between perception and reality to increase our powers of persuasion and influence—in relationships, business, and beyond.
His one-man show, The Enigmatist, sold out a year-long run in New York City. It next moves to Los Angeles at the Geffen Playhouse.
Carolyn Purnell
Carolyn Purnell is a history instructor, writer, and lover of all things colorful and offbeat. She is the author of The Sensational Past: How the Enlightenment Changed the Way We Use Our Senses (Norton, 2017) and the forthcoming Inventing Color. Carolyn earned her Ph.D. in history from University of Chicago, and her work has appeared in Wall Street Journal, CityLab by The Atlantic, Good Housekeeping, and Apartment Therapy. She is also the author of the “Making Sense” blog for Psychology Today. Carolyn has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Huntington Library, Georges Lurcy Foundation, Brown Foundation of Fellows, and French Society for Historical Studies.
Patrick Roche
Patrick Roche is a professional magician, Electrical Engineering student at the University of St. Thomas, and a member of the Playful Learning Lab. His projects with the Playful Learning Lab include Circus Science, PLAYground, OK GO Sandbox, and Art In Space. Patrick studied sleight of hand from David Williamson and Benjamin Earl, and worked on The Enigmatist featuring David Kwong. He continues to work with Kwong on upcoming magic projects.