Creative Leadership

Leadership is harder to demonstrate through an online portfolio than writing skill or design acumen.  There’s no easy piece of evidence that could prove a skill like “inspiring team members” or “maintaining and communicating a cohesive vision.”  But since I see creative direction as one of my most practiced and expert skills, I’ll try to nonetheless provide a brief tour through some of my most important experiences with it.


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Leadership Experience: TechSmart

Outside of indie game development, I spent nine years at a “day job” as Creative Director of Curriculum at a coding education company called TechSmart.  TechSmart builds coding courses for students in elementary through high school, with a focus on preparing them for professional pathways.  My primary responsibility there was to ensure that all the activities in the curriculum are as engaging and enjoyable as possible to students while still being world-class educational assets.  I also advocated for student creativity, helped with marketing, and held a leadership role through all phases of planning and developing new curricula.

As part of being Creative Director, I defined creative strategies for each age group and course type that we offered.  I worked with artists and coders, managed direct reports, and mentored newer curriculum developers.  I was often responsible for leading teams to create entire courses on tight deadlines.

Even though it’s outside the games industry, TechSmart has been invaluable in helping me learn how to work with a multidisciplinary team of professionals as a creative leader.


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Writing Directorship: Quicksilver: Infinite Story

During the production of Quicksilver: Infinite Story, I led a team of writers for a year.  I led meetings to develop the initial fiction, and then acted as producer to set schedules and milestones.  I created a pipeline for interactive recombinant writing, worked with writers to develop appropriate tones for characters and world, and edited their work for consistency and clarity.

Through that experience, I learned that a Lead Writer doesn’t actually get to do much writing.  I’m comfortable helping with any level of the narrative process, from Creative Director down to prose stylist.


Other Recommendations:

Though games like Astronaut: The Best and Alphabeats were made with small indie teams, I had a primary leadership role, working with artists and musicians to direct a consistent vision.