Origin Story
I’ve always been wrong about where I’d be in a year.
At various points, I’ve fancied myself a novelist, a physicist, a linguist, an academic, only to fall in love with questions from another field and swerve into my next pursuit. I’ve tried on a lot of different hats and hobbies. Through it all, some of the only constants in my life have been my obsession with fictional worlds and games.
And when I say games, I mean not only video games, but board games, physical games, even conversational games. For me, all games are doorways into hypothetical worlds that color my perspective and inspire me to think playfully. They’re fundamental to the way I interact with the world. My college application essay was about my (ever-so-slightly malicious) childhood hobby of testing my cousins’ new boyfriends with board game duels. When I join a new community, games are how I find new friends. There’s magic in games — a simple set of rules can catalyze thoughts, conversations and ultimately, forge connections that would otherwise never be.
But despite my fascination with games, I never realized games were something I could actually work on professionally, which is why I started off as a linguistics major in college. After getting nerd-sniped into switching majors in my fourth year (a grueling trial my friends refer to as “the dark year”), I graduated with a computer science major and a creative writing minor.
With my freshly-acquired computer science education, I began to see the logic underlying games I played and took to tinkering with my own tiny projects. I quickly realized that games were the perfect marriage of technical and creative craft that I’d been looking for, in a passion I already had.
Seeking guidance, I headed to grad school for a masters in computer graphics at the University of Pennsylvania. I enjoyed my time at Penn so much that I stayed after graduation to teach a course I designed on procedural graphics techniques.
I loved the experience of helping to build a community centered around learning, creative collaboration and the playful application of algorithmic thinking. And once again I thought I’d found my calling, this time as an educator and academic. Although I wouldn’t work on games directly, I’d help grow and share the body of knowledge used to make them.
But I was due for one more swerve. A chance encounter with Min Kim (and a long conversation about board games) lead me to meet the Bonfire team. After hearing Bonfire’s mission to create friendships with their games, I knew I’d found a creative team of kindred spirits. In all my aspirational wanderings, I always circled the same set of values: interdisciplinary thinking, community, and play. When I saw how the Bonfire team and vision championed these values, I knew I simply had to join.
I feel unreasonably lucky to have found my way to this team of passionate, talented people who stand out not only as individuals, but also in the community they build together.
And this time for sure, I know what I’ll be doing in a year.
