PLAYBL - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Physician
- Vice President, Operations
Dr. Anusha Raja is a physician trained in Internal Medicine. She is passionate about improving preventative healthcare and mental health through innovation and entrepreneurship. She has consulted for health tech companies, competed and won healthcare hackathons, and worked with multidisciplinary teams to improve clinical practices for patients through her work in the Quality Improvement and Physician Leadership Distinction at Yale New Haven Hospital. Utilizing her on-the-ground clinical experience and her background in business development, Dr. Raja serves as a vital mediator to develop sustainable and long-lasting healthcare solutions.
Dr. Raja earned her BS from Yale University, MD from Yale School of Medicine, and MBA from Yale School of Management.
Dr. Elizabeth Cho-Fertikh is a scientist-turned-angel investor. She is Cofounder of MEDA Angels, a healthcare-focused angel investor group, that has invested in health SaaS, digital health and medical device companies. As an operator at MedTech startups, she also has experience on the "other side of the table", bringing a full circle understanding of what it takes to advance a company forward. She enjoys mentoring startups, serving as an advisor at multiple healthcare incubators & accelerators. Her passion for making educational-med tech solutions widely accessible to support adolescent mental well-being comes from knowing first-hand the needs of this population, as a parent to a teenage daughter.
Job Titles:
- Advisor
- Technology Leader
Dr. Joseph South is a national educational technology leader focused on evidence-based learning transformation. Joseph formerly served as the director of the Office of Educational Technology at the U.S. Department of Education. As a presidential appointee in the Obama Administration, he was an adviser to the Secretary of Education. During his tenure, he developed national educational technology policy, formed public-private partnerships to assist state and local education leaders in transitioning to digital learning, expanded the use of openly licensed educational resources (OER), and worked directly with EdTech entrepreneurs, funders, and innovators.
Joseph was previously a design resident at IDEO where he helped shape The Purpose Project-designed to help young people understand their strengths while developing expertise in something they care deeply about to prototype their purpose. He is a strong proponent of the active use of technology by learners and nurturing purpose-driven expertise. Joseph currently serves as the Chief Learning Officer for the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) and leads his own consulting firm, Learning Accelerant.
He has led learning product development teams at startups, museums, nonprofits, corporations and higher education institutions.
He holds a doctorate in instructional psychology and technology from Brigham Young University.
Job Titles:
- Advisor
- President and CEO of Girls Inc
Dr. Stephanie J. Hull is President and CEO of Girls Inc., a national organization that works with girls ages 5-18, particularly girls color and girls whose families are experiencing poverty or other challenges, to ensure that they grow up healthy, educated, and independent. Prior to joining Girls Inc., Stephanie was the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. She was also previously Head of the Brearley School and held various faculty and leadership positions at Wellesley, Mount Holyoke, and Dartmouth Colleges. Stephanie earned her B.A. from Wellesley College in French Literature and her A.M. and Ph.D. from Harvard University in Romance Languages and Literatures. A career educator, Stephanie has also worked in school and university administration, in teaching and teacher preparation, with a focus on improving educational outcomes for all, but especially for those who are most vulnerable. She brings to Playbl her commitment to educational equity and her expertise in evaluating and disseminating both the curricular and the co-curricular interventions that will best support successful personal development for young people.
Job Titles:
- Founder
- Professor of Medicine at the Yale University School of Medicine
Dr. Lynn Fiellin is a Professor of Medicine at the Yale University School of Medicine, the Yale Child Study Center, and the Yale School of Public Health. She is the Founding Director of the play2PREVENT Lab at the Yale Center for Health & Learning Games, an NIH and foundation-funded center. Over the past 12 years and having raised close to $15 million, she and her team of behavioral and medical scientists, community and adolescent partners, and serious game developers have developed, evaluated and disseminated digital health games to adolescents nationally and globally. These videogame interventions target the most critical health issues for teens such as mental health, substance misuse, and sexual health and Dr. Fiellin and her team have demonstrated using the most rigorous scientific methods, the significant impact of their games. She has published over 25 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journal describing the results of her research. More recently, she founded Playbl, a spin-out company from her Lab, which focuses on the marketing and distribution of the Lab's digital health games. Playbl holds the promise of getting these effective and engaging digital health tools into the hands of adolescents who will benefit in terms of their gaining knowledge and skills to lead happier and healthier lives.
Robert Gehorsam brings to Playbl decades of experience leading organizations innovating in games, digital media, and educational technology. He has cofounded and led startups, been a senior executive in global media companies, and been a venture partner for a global venture capital firm. He currently advises a range of early-stage companies in artificial intelligence, intellectual capital, digital health, bio-fabrication, education, and the creative arts.
His clients have included Healthy Minds Innovations (the well-being spin-out from Dr. Richie Davidson's famed Center for Healthy Minds), Girls Inc., Arizona State University, the Chan-Zuckerberg Foundation, and Logitech.
He is currently a contributing author to the upcoming Carbon Almanac (Penguin|Random House, June 2022).
Previously, Robert served as Executive Director of Institute of Play, a pioneering non-profit in the application of game design to educational systems. As founder and President at Forterra Systems he oversaw the creation and growth of a pioneering virtual world "serious games" platform used by a wide range of learning organizations and guided the company to a sale to SAIC in 2010.
Robert received his B.A. in Religious Studies from Grinnell College and serves as incoming President of the college's Alumni Council and observer on the Board of Trustees.
Job Titles:
- Advisor
- Advisor or Board Member
Dr. Steve Arnold serves as an advisor or board member to several nonprofit organizations, startup companies and venture firms that share his interest in human development and education. In addition to being an advisor to Playbl, he is co-founder and vice chairman of the George Lucas Educational Foundation and chairs the boards of Enlearn and Healthy Minds Innovations. He also serves on the boards of The Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL) and The New Mexico School of the Arts, and chairs the advisory council of Angela Duckworth's Character Lab.
Steve spent over 35 years as an executive and investor in digital media and technology-related companies. He was vice president and general manager of Lucasfilm Games and Lucasfilm Learning and president and CEO of Continuum Productions (which became Corbis), founded by Bill Gates to pioneer interactive digital libraries. He was then vice president of Broadband Media Applications at Microsoft Corporation. Subsequently, he co-founded Polaris Partners, a venture capital and growth equity firm investing in digital media, e-commerce, communications, internet, software, and life sciences, among other domains. He is now a Partner Emeritus with that firm.
Steve's educational background includes a B.S in Psychology (1972) from Macalester College in St Paul, MN, and an M.A. in Comparative Psychology (1974) and Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology (1977) from the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco.