alex stone
Alex Stone has 12 years of experience developing educational software and is credited on over 50 math, science, literacy, and civics games in programmer, technical lead, and executive producer roles. Alex has a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
dan white
Dan White believes that good gameplay and good learning are complementary rather than oppositional forces. An alumnus of Cornell University and the University of Wisconsin – Madison, Dan earned an M.S. in Education Technology under seminal learning game scholars Drs. Kurt Squire and James Paul Gee. Prior to founding Filament, Dan worked as a teacher, an instructional designer, and a game developer. Dan’s passions include learning games, sustainability, mindfulness, and modernizing institutional education.
dan norton
Dan Norton loves approaching each new project at Filament as an opportunity to find authentic passion and engagement around learning new things. Dan blends his love for game design with his love of collaborative creativity to support Filament’s design and artistic teams.
georgia adkins
Georgia developed a keen interest in education while teaching English overseas before ultimately venturing into the field of educational games. She assists in testing various projects and values the joy and challenge in attempting to break things.
Georgia loves dabbling in Korean cooking to appease her reverse-homesickness.
joshua bartels
What does photosynthesis sound like? What music should accompany virtual reality robots? These are the kind of questions Josh creatively answers as Sound Designer and Music Composer. From 1920’s ragtime, to futuristic space, he provides all the acoustic color!
Josh also produces the studio's video content with trailers, motion graphics, and marketing videos.
shawn baxter
Shawn has never been content pursuing just one creative endeavor and has had experience designing in a number of industries. He is in constant pursuit of a well-thought-out and artistic interface.
Wait, we were allowed to write a fun fact?
laura beukema
Laura has been designing educational and positive impact games and interactives for over a decade. She loves blending learning and play into new experiences. Her favorite thing about it is exploring such a wide variety of topics!
When not gaming, Laura can often be found knitting for a cozier apocalypse.
travis bird
Travis has been playing video games ever since he was able to hold a controller, and always wanted to eventually create his own. As a recent UW-Madison graduate, Travis loves programming, but definitely has the most fun working on games!
In addition to his love of games, Travis is a third-degree black belt in Taekwondo, and is currently training in Muay Thai.
leah blasczyk
Straight out of UW-Whitewater with degrees in Math, Computer Science, and Game Design, Leah is excited to be working on games that make people smile. She never wants to stop learning and loves putting her skills to the test in game jams.
Leah has had many odd hobbies including duct tape art, a 2nd-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do, and playing the oboe!
tarathorn boonngamanong
Tarathorn studied Game Design & Production and VR & Immersive Experiences at Drexel University. They are passionate about educational games and immersive experiences that promote empathy.
In their free time, they enjoys bouldering, learning random DIY projects and mushroom foraging!
michael brissie
Michael studied sculpture and drawing before his transition to the digital space. Now, he wiggles verts and jiggles bones, modeling objects and creatures of all sorts. He’s a tinkerer, through and through.
Spicy food is addictive, because of adrenaline & endorphins! You can also build a tolerance to spice. Michael likes ghost peppers. The spice must flow.
dylan caldwell
Dylan started working in games after a game jam in 2017, which led him to port educational mobile games in Unity. Since then, Dylan has worked on a VR music game and cofounded an indie studio. He now writes features and squashes bugs at Filament.
Dylan does kickflips to make himself feel better on bad days.
meghan connor
Meghan began her 3D journey because she loved creating fun and wacky environments. More recently she is also known to dabble in character art where she gives faces to the mundane objects. Life has also led her to do things like rotoscoping puppets, decorating cakes and 3D scanning human remains.
Meghan has enough yarn to insulate a small home
gene cook
A former west coast game engineer and dot-comer turned proud Midwest hockey dad — complete with a sweet Subaru station wagon! Gene is an accomplished classical pianist who sometimes wishes he’d learned to play the guitar instead.
Gene’s useless super power is a steel-trap memory for key stats of most motorcycles produced between 1976 and 1992.
nick curto
Nick is passionate about games and the good they can do. He likes group bike rides, reading non-fiction, and rhythm games. Nick is a golf enthusiast but wishes the sport was more action-packed.
Nick will always accept a plastic instrument duel.
brian czech
Brian has been doing software QA since 2007. He tested Epic’s CVIS for 5 years before making the switch to Filament in 2013. In his free time he enjoys biking, canoeing, travelling, reading, trying new beers, and relaxing with his wife, son, and dog.
Brian and his wife Beth travelled around Australia for a year in a campervan they named Magnitude. Pop! Pop!
michael darling
From software engineer, to full-time musician, to game developer, Michael loves pretty much any hobby that involves making cool things. Except cooking, which has too many steps.
Michael used to play competitive Smash Bros, and is still known to break out his Young Link/Pichu skills from time to time.
miah dawes
In college, Miah learned UX design while pursuing a more technical IT degree. There she found her niche exploring user interactions in games and extended reality. She loves creating immersive experiences that help players have fun while learning.
Miah has a plumeria (Mr. Plume) that, despite her best efforts to care for, refuses to grow flowers.
ian feldschneider
Ian is a game engineer, passionate for the medium of games and how they evolve through time. He enjoys experimenting with procedural generation, and has a fascination with making wild predictions on the future of the gaming industry.
Ian owns an authentic Club Nintendo Hanafuda deck on his desk, and is always willing to challenge someone to play.
alyssa froehling
Alyssa is a graduate of Ohio State’s MFA Creative Writing program. She supports the sales and marketing team through content marketing and writing for social media. While not working, Alyssa is reading mystery novels, crying while playing the Life is Strange series, or walking her dog, Duckie.
One of Alyssa’s favorite animals is the red river hog.
kylie gilde
Kylie joined Filament as her first job out of college, where she majored in game design and development. Making educational games is the perfect intersection of her two passions: programming games that make people happy and learning obscure trivia.
Kylie owns well over 1000 books (she's counted) and once designed and programmed a catalog to keep track of them all.
shaina grade
Shaina diligently manages the Production, Quality Assurance, and AV departments. Her primary responsibility is to make sure the studio is allocated properly and that projects are running smoothly from the sales process through development and maintenance.
A huge Star Trek fan, Shaina has met several cast members including William Shatner, George Takei, and Walter Koenig!
kenny green
Ever the competitor, Kenny doesn’t back down from a challenge. He enjoys learning from each project and sharing those lessons with new teams. You might even catch him occasionally wearing his varsity esports jersey while leading a standup.
Kenny has webbed toes and can do a backflip!
ivy hong
Ivy learned architectural design during undergrad, but soon discovered her love for design across all mediums. She is passionate about creating immersive experiences via emerging technologies in a fun and artistic way.
She would join a local A Cappella group whenever she moves to a new city.
joseph horan
Joe makes games.
Joe plays games.
carlos horta
Since preschool, games became Carlos’ passion but it wasn’t until he grew up watching awesome cutscenes and playing epic stories that he decided that he wanted to do the same. Carlos likes to learn new things like cooking or how to play an instrument.
Carlos' wife told him that he tends to stick out his tongue when he's deeply concentrated playing games or doing something funny. He wasn't even aware of this.
jennifer javornik
Jennifer works with people from all over the globe who potentially want to work with Filament to make games, simulations, and VR and AR experiences that make an impact. She helps them understand what Filament can do and how we do it.
She was told she was special for being born on Leap Day to distract her from the fact that she only has a birthday every 4 years.
luke jayapalan
As a Game Designer, Luke works with clients and with Filament’s talented development team to find fun and effective ways to help players learn. Luke loves working on educational games because the wide range of subjects makes every game unique.
Luke loves to sing and has been doing so for as long as he can remember.
roma jensen
Roma is a graduate of Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, where she studied illustration and animation. She puts both of those skills to use at Filament, drawing various chickens and jungle plants. In her spare time, she watches cheesy 80’s films and draws clowns who are also cops.
Don’t look now, but I’m right behind you.
charlie klein
Charlie produces clean and concise financial reports and budgets in an effort to create clarity in a rapidly changing business environment. He is a CPA and CMA who enjoys the professional challenges of working in the learning games and technology sectors.
Charlie occasionally believes that a well-tailored spreadsheet can communicate better than words.
brandon korth
Brandon works across all disciplines to create intuitive interfaces and experiences. From day to day you may find him designing wireframes, creating polished game art, documenting new feature behaviors, or animating bubbly characters.
Brandon was a producer & programmer for 3 years while improving his artistic skills to land his dream job in UX Design.
steve lilley
Steve is a former mechanical engineer that is now a game programmer and developer. He loves all things gaming: all kinds of video games, board games, and sports. He also enjoys chilling out with activities such as hiking, puzzles, and drawing.
Steve subconsciously makes lots of sound effects when doing mundane activities throughout the day.
kellie lu
Kellie breaks down game genres and reassembles them elegantly. Her player-driven design is informed by backgrounds in psychology and creative writing. She loves world-building, crafting, and games where teammates support each other.
Kellie practices Aikido to put her mind in tune with her body. It’s nice exercise for both!
lisa maeda
Lisa is a Japanese-American 2D illustrator with a passion for creating wholesome, educational media for kids. In her spare time, she collects washi tape, penpals, and enjoys visual novels.
Lisa spends her weekends looking for the best matcha latte in New York City.
kristen san martin
Kristen is part of the Web Team. She is passionate and driven and loves to solve technical problems which led her to a career in software development.
Thanks to a class performance she was in when she was 7, Kristen can still recite all 50 states in alphabetical order.
garret moran
Since graduating from Champlain College, Garret has made a physical card game, mentored middle-school kids in the ways of game development, and released the first level of his 3D platformer with horror elements all before arriving at Filament!
Garret has been known to recreate giant robots from video games out of lego bricks.
sydney myers
Sydney studied Media and Game Development at UW Whitewater in hopes of going into an educational field to create things that could help better the world or people. She’s an avid Star Wars enthusiast who enjoys hiking, board games, and Pokemon.
Sydney has a collection of over 50 Pokemon plushies
agnes nantista
Agnes is an Animation/Illustration graduate from San José State University. She is always looking to learn new things and improve her work. You can often find her zoomed in on artwork with extreme concentration.
Her small stature is a curse that prevents her from eating large portions of her favorite foods.
vian nguyen
Vian is a queer Vietnamese-American artist using game design to facilitate spaces of feeling, self-reflection, and noticing the world. Coming from Epic Games they’ve arrived to pursue their dream: creating playful educational experiences for youth.
Yoko Ono and Ms. Frizzle are Vian's inspirations. Games and aesthetic respectively.
cal oliverius
Cal is a seasoned production wizard with humble beginnings in the board game industry. As a CAPM Project Manager and Certified Scrum Master, they are experienced in a wide range of solutions for holding projects together and getting things done.
Cal is an aerial performer and choreographer! They fly around in the air in aerial hoops and trapezes - WITHOUT accidentally hurting themself!
ryan parasiliti
Ryan is a red mage and serial hobbyist with experience in instructional design, media production, teaching, photography, assessment science, and project management among much more. If he doesn’t know how to do it, give him a sandwich and a few hours.
Ryan’s “vibe” has been described as “tired, yet determined.” He has a beautiful pittie named Deku who is queen of the house, to his wife’s chagrin.
brandon pittser
With a 10 year tenure in the Ed Tech industry, Brandon leads the content marketing practice and helps to guide the overall business strategy at Filament Games. His role also includes oversight of Filament’s funding development practice, tracking and pursuing funding opportunities for both internal and collaborative projects.
Brandon has a small collection of non-functioning vintage cameras.
srivathsan prakash
After moving from design to engineering in college, Srivathsan finally gets to do what he loves at Filament: pull his hair out fixing bugs. Besides game dev, he likes to write rap, get outdoors, travel, and spend time with his favorite people.
As a kid, Srivathsan wanted to become a scientist so he could make a radioactive spider, get bitten, and become Spiderman.
ana qiu
After years of working as a “player” in global financial markets, Ana decided to become an educational game designer to promote people’s lifelong learning. She went to NYU Games for Learning program and now joined Filament to make fun learning games.
Ana is a real-life Tetris master. She’s good at stuffing refrigerators, suitcases, closets, shelves, car trunks, and board game boxes.
ray raasch
Ray is a passionate learner who transitioned to a team lead role after years of working as a developer in the field of educational technology. As a servant-leader, she strives to inspire and empower each individual to their highest potential.
Ray's first job was being the Chuck E. Cheese mascot. She's also built and lived in a tiny house.
jon rakocy
Jon is in Information Technology and loves working with people and computers. His strengths cover a variety of areas. His current focuses are on Linux servers and VMware.
Likes hot peppers and long walks on the beach.
tracey reinke
A renaissance woman at heart, Tracey’s many passions magically assembled into a graphic design position at Filament. She loves problem-solving and longs to make pleasant experiences for users. She is also the self-appointed sheriff of using crisp web graphics.
Tracey has been swing dancing for 15 years and can frequently be found teaching classes locally.
luis garcia remes
Luis is an avid gamer and game engineer. He enjoys working on gameplay and AI. He also enjoy playing and designing board games/card games.
Luis has two wiener dogs, named Loki and Bacca (named so because his dad was named Chew).
erica scheelk
When not doing game dev, you’ll find Erica tending to her cats, watching plants grow, or cooking a large cauldron of soup.
Mint and Catnip are in the same family. You can tell by their square shaped stems.
jennifer seo
Jennifer worked in various industries as a marketing designer in California. She was always interested in exploring new spaces, especially in gaming. RPG games are Jennifer’s jam and she would sell her soul for the next installment of Dragon Quest.
Jennifer's small dream is to collect every food shaped plushie in existence.
robert sharpe
Robert enjoys getting deep in the weeds of various creative projects. Music, art, stories, programming – you name it. He always loves learning the process in those endeavors and will bug you about yours soon enough! Also, spreadsheets!
Always unsure what he does best, Robert fancies himself a bard! Mostly by pen & paper and in RPGs, but in real life too...
colin skinner
Colin appreciates the unique power of games as tools for learning about systems. He enjoys studying real-life systems and devising game mechanics that illustrate their behavior. He also likes playing ultimate frisbee, kiteboarding, and cooking tasty Chinese food.
Colin is on an eternal quest to create the fluffiest steamed buns.
hayden smith
Hayden’s goal in life is to spread positivity and leave a good impact on the world. He loves solving problems and overcoming challenges! He is a writer, actor, and vocalist; his favorite activity in the world is helping others with creative projects.
Hayden loves tabletop gaming! He has a homebrew tabletop RPG that he's been working on since high school.
demetri sofides
Demetri studied Classical Civilizations and Creative Writing in college, and wants to use the medium of video games to make obscure topics engaging and accessible. He worked at a VR studio before coming to Filament, and spends his free time sketching concept art and poring over word etymologies.
Demetri was part of an archaeological excavation in the Aegean, where he helped dig up a Byzantine-period grave containing seven skeletons.
ryan throw
Ryan has had a passion for game development for over 10 years. He loves the creative process, especially engineering and design. When he’s not making games he’s riding his motorcycle, rock climbing, or painting.
He really likes Go Karting and usually manages to get a “Top Ten Monthly” lap time when he goes.
megan tran
Megan enjoys understanding people’s needs and helping those around her, whether it’s by creating fun and intuitive player experiences, or by collaborating with teammates on design, art, and the weird little technical bits in between.
Megan once got 5 seal plushies in a row out of a crane machine.
joe truesdale
Diving into the unknown, shedding light on it, and wrangling it into submission is what Joe loves to do most. Finding answers and connecting people is how that manifests at Filament. At home, it’s going on adventures with his wife and son.
Joe learned how to square dance in high school and can still square-thru-four and allemande left with the best of ‘em!
pattie umali
Pattie previously worked in study abroad and higher education. She nerds out on food and culture, fantasy and lore, cats, and world travel. She wants digital storytelling to be a primary tool for intercultural learning and cultural expression.
Pattie’s fantasy goals include starting a cheese farm and creamery.
vanessa vostmyer
Vanessa enjoys working with diverse teams to produce impactful learning. Her can-do attitude and years of experience help facilitate success. She enjoys partnering with clients and providing win/win solutions. Crafting, gaming, and anime are her jam.
Vanessa loves nature and animals. She has a koi pond in her backyard!
mackenzie walter
Administrative Assistant & Coordinator of Awesome! Mackenzie originally went to school to become a doctor and help people, but plans changed. She still gets to help people every day – this way she’s buying coffee, keeping schedules efficient, and being the go-to gal for any odd job or question.
With 3 dogs, 2 cats and a husband who drums, she regularly wears earbuds at home. In her free time, she enjoys art making and playing volleyball.
shannon weaver
Shannon is a Digital Art graduate from Pennsylvania where she studied 2D animation, concept art, and character design. She loves working as part of a team to create and share works that bring people together.
Shannon’s creative space of choice is a 30 minute car drive into town to get coffee, blasting music while brainstorming her next art project.
virginia wilkerson
Virginia majored in comic books in college then got her master’s in video games. She believes there’s something interesting about everything and loves finding cool, engaging ways to communicate ideas.
Virginia collects hobbies including ballet, drawing, sculpting, knife juggling, unicycling, tinkering, and more.
alex yaeger
Coming from a background in graphic design, Alex developed UX skills at interactive-advertising agencies before coming to Filament. Now a team member for a number of years, Alex wields a demanding pickiness for aesthetics and a keen eye for detail.
The eternally youthful Alex has been described as an elvish prince from the land of tasteful furniture and decor.
that improve people's lives