Tim Maly is a writer and design critic. His work focuses on the role of speculation, magic, and words at the strange edges of architecture and design. He has been a journalist, video-game maker, virtual-worlds educator, and debating coach. He teaches in the graduate industrial design program at RISD, is a fellow at Harvard’s metaLAB, and cofounded the Dredge Research Collaborative. With Emily Horne, he cowrote The Inspection House: An Impertinent Field Guide to Modern Surveillance, published by Coach House Press. He is @doingitwrong on Twitter.

I’m most excited to work on projects that… tell stories in new and interesting ways, or that experiment with ways of conveying an experience that fall outside of normal narrative styles.

I’m looking for partners that can help me… ground my skills and interests in real world situations and challenges.

A moment when I felt most inspired in my work was… at 2am, sitting in an otherwise darkened studio, illuminated by my laptop and a desk lamp, working through the second draft of a chapter I was writing about the strange history of Prison Blues, a brand of jeans made in Oregon prison.

Susanna Pollack is president of Games for Change, the leading global advocate for the power of games and virtual realities as drivers of social impact. She produces the annual Games for Change Festival, the largest gaming event in New York, dubbed by national media as “the Sundance of video games.” This year she is launching VR for Change Summit as part of the Festival.

Susanna works closely with organizations that are actively pursuing digital games to further their public or CSR mission. For clients—including American Express Foundation, United Nations, Women’s Sports Foundation, Autodesk, Carnegie Foundation, Ad Council, Smithsonian Museum, and McKinsey Social—she has initiated dozens of programs to advance the “games for good” sector. With a commitment to learning and education, Susanna also developed the G4C Student Challenge with the NYC Department of Education. The NYC pilot attracted world-class partners including The New York Times, the NYC Mayor’s Office, the ACLU, X Prize, and Unity Technologies to bring a games design challenge to middle- and high-school students across the city. The program is now scaling nationally. Also at G4C, Susanna launched the Games for Learning Summit with collaboration from the US Department of Education and the Entertainment Software Association.

I am a brand strategist striving to identify logic and weave a yarn of magic in crafting authentic brands that morph into telling culturally relevant stories. I moved from Mumbai to New York to pursue my MA in branding from the School of Visual Arts and found myself interested in the friction between human truth and world realities. My forte lies in the gap between what science knows and what business does while working with intention and empathy.

I’m most excited to work on projects that… allow outrageousness and nonconformity while breeding my curiosity.

I’m looking for partners that can help me… impact culture to impact humanity by starting small and possible.

A moment when I felt most inspired in my work was… working with my team on my thesis project of repositioning the American dream through the lens of the pursuit of happiness.

Innovations in my field I’m most excited to work on… empower communities to fix their most fundamental problems within rural societies.

Nick Fortugno is a designer of digital and real-world games and cofounder of Playmatics, a game design company in New York City. Nick has been a designer, writer, and producer on dozens of games, serving as lead designer on the downloadable blockbuster Diner Dash, award-winning serious game Ayiti: The Cost of Life, CableFAX award winning Breaking Bad: The Interrogation, and MUSE award winner Body/Mind/Change as well as games with Red Bull, Disney, AMC, the Red Cross/Crescent, PBS, and USAID. Nick is cofounder of the Come Out & Play street games festival, and teaches game design and interactive narrative at Columbia University and the New School. Nick holds an MFA in design and technology from Parsons School of Design.

I’m most excited to work on projects that… allow people to learn or feel something through their own process of discovery.

I’m looking for partners that can help me… forge partnerships to build impactful and powerful games for change.

A moment when I felt most inspired in my work was… seeing adults being silly, rolling a pair of giant inflatable dice at the request of their children, and seeing the release that having fun gave them.

Innovations in my field I’m most excited to work on… are new disciplines such as healthcare, journalism, philanthropy, and public policy that want to use games to forward their messages.

Moritz Kütt is working as a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security. He received a PhD in physics from the Technische Universität Darmstadt in 2016. For his dissertation, he analyzed the role of open source software for trust and transparency in nuclear arms control applications. His current research interests are nuclear reactor simulations (criticality/burnup), new warhead verification technologies (information barriers/virtual reality applications), and on a broader scale the role of access and classification of information for the verification of a nuclear weapons ban treaty.

I’m most excited to work on projects that… can be freely shared with others, both the results and the hardware and software involved.

I’m looking for partners that can help me… with technical expertise in developing trusted electronics for measurement systems to be used for arms control and disarmament verification.

A moment when I felt most inspired in my work was… seeing how students got excited and motivated to study while doing a hands-on project in a class I taught (“Hacking Measurement Electronics”).

Innovations in my field I’m most excited to work on… include newly released Open Silicon microprocessors (e.g., SiFive E300) and getting closer to hardware where everything including integrated circuits is open source.

Meredith Horowski is global campaign director at Global Zero, the international movement for the elimination of nuclear weapons. She spearheads GZ’s international advocacy strategy, creative campaigns, and public mobilization. Meredith is an experienced social justice campaigner with particular expertise in grassroots organizing and in creating powerful, diverse movements on pressing social issues. Prior to joining Global Zero, Meredith managed college organizing at the ONE Campaign, where she led youth organizing strategy and execution in the US and for special campaigns Europe. She also spent three years as a research assistant at the National Poverty Center, where she helped produce a variety policy briefs and published reports on the spectrum of connectedness to social programs. Meredith graduated from the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, with a focus on human rights and international development. She speaks Spanish and is an avid horseback rider and college football fan.

I’m most excited to work on projects that… build people and political power.

I’m looking for partners that can help me… bring in new messengers with diverse, powerful platforms to nuclear issues.

A moment when I felt most inspired in my work was… when Hillary Clinton discussed our campaign in front of 96 million Americans.

Innovations in my field I’m most excited to work on… involve intersectional connections with nuclear issues—particularly around race, gender, corporate wealth, and the environment.