About Alan Gershenfeld
Alan Gershenfeld is Co-Founder/President of E-Line Media, a developer of games that help players understand and shape the world. Alan has worked on impact game projects with the Gates Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, NSF, BBC, USAID, DARPA, White House OSTP, Cook Inlet Tribal Council, Games for Change, Google, Sesame Workshop, MIT Center for Bits and Atoms and ASU Center for Games and Impact.
E-Line’s most recent release, Never Alone (Kisima Ingitchuna), was developed in partnership with the Cook Inlet Tribal Council to share, celebrate and extend Alaska Native culture. The game has been downloaded over 4 million times, featured in over 1000 articles and won multiple awards including a British Academy Award (BAFTA) and Game of the Year at Games for Change. E-Line also publishes Gamestar Mechanic, a game that empowers youth to make games to foster 21st Century skills and a motivation for STEM. Through Gamestar, youth have created close to 1 million games played over 15 million times in 100 countries and has won numerous industry awards.
Prior to E-Line, Alan was member of the executive management team that rebuilt game publisher Activision from bankruptcy into a global industry leader. As Head of Activision Studios, Alan oversaw titles such as Civilization: Call to Power, Asteroids 3D, Muppet Treasure Island, Spycraft, Pitfall, Zork and Tony Hawk Skateboarding. Before Activision, Alan spent nearly ten years in the film industry where he worked in development, production and post-production roles on numerous feature films and documentaries.
Alan has published articles on technology, media and social impact in Scientific American, Education Week, Huffington Post, Slate, Politico, Marketwatch and Knowledge Quest. Most recently He is co-author, with his two brothers, of Designing Reality: How to Survive and Thrive in the 3rd Digital Revolution. Alan serves on the Board of Directors of FilmAid International and on the Advisory Boards of iCivics and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center For Educational Media and Research (Sesame Workshop). He is also former Chairman of the Board for Games for Change and a Founding Industry Fellow at the ASU Center for Games and Impact.