Founded in 2014, Happy People Games, LLC is a serious games company. The Company received a grant from the U.S. Department of Education to research and develop a sexual assault prevention serious game for high school students in 2017. Happy People Games also received a grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to research and develop a sexual assault prevention serious game for college students.

Sharon Wood is Co-Founder and CEO of Happy People Games, LLC. Previously, Ms. Wood was Founder and CEO of Stone Creek Entertainment which created apps for girls and women. Her Karizmac Luminous™ app was a Top 10 app in 34 countries, empowering girls and women to be confident about their opinions.

Sharon has over 40 years of experience spanning sports marketing, entertainment marketing, marketing to kids and digital marketing, working with leading brands such as Major League Baseball, The U.S. Olympic Training Center, Burger King, Miller Brewing Company, Sears, Nabisco, Pepsi Cola, Frito Lay, MTV and Seventeen Magazine. She has also launched more than thirty video games including Grand Theft Auto, Stacked with Daniel Negraneau, Jeff Gordon XS Racing, Ten Pin Alley, MTV Music Generator, and Adventure Game of the Year, Sanitarium.

Monty Sharma, Managing Director, is an HPG Board Member and Managing Director at MassDigi, which fosters a bond between academia and the games industry. He is a mentor to the MIT Sandbox and Harvard iLab, as well as other serious and entertainment games startups. He has worked extensively on delivering “real world” or “trade school” skills to students in game design.  Monty is formerly a Founder/General Manager of Vivox, a voice chat service provider in the games industry that serves 60 Million+ users worldwide, with key relationships with EA, Ubisoft, Sony, Nexon, Big Point and more. Monty previously held various management positions in SASS software companies.

Christine Casey, Ed.D., has worked as an educator and school administrator for more than 40 years. Dr. Casey’s work was acknowledged by numerous awards, including a Congressional Award from the Congressional Black Caucus. She created a series of curricula that has been downloaded by more than 100,000 teachers for the innovative work of ByKidsForKids. She also created soft skills curriculum for the Office of Disability Education Policy.

Travis Williams, Happy People Games Executive Producer, began his career in entertainment in 1990 as one of the co-creators of the “World of Darkness” Roleplaying games from White Wolf. The World of Darkness properties (Vampire, Werewolf, Mage) went on to become comics, television shows, video games and novels. As a game producer Travis has produced diverse products: popular fighting games (Super Street Fighter II Turbo, X-Men Children of the Atom), award winning Adventure games (Hell, Bureau 13, Sanitarium), Massively Multiplayer Online Games (The Matrix Online, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, DC Universe) and Social gaming (PAIN) on the PlayStation 3.

During his video game career, Travis has managed budgets lean (i.e., $100,000) and large ($100 Million).

Travis is currently the Vice President of Gaming at Lightstorm Entertainment Inc., where he is responsible for Titanic, Alita and Avatar games across all digital media (PC, Console, Location Based Entertainment and VR). In his role, Travis maintains IP and brand fidelity across all media formats.

ALKEBULAN KOLLECTIVE™ (TAK) is a minority-owned transmedia company, creating and producing high-concept content for all screens and in all formats.  TAK was established specifically to create content as diverse as the team — adventure and serious games, graphic novels that represent our cultures and history, multi-generational animation, four quadrant films, and scripted content for television.

Lindsay Orchowski, M.S.,Ph.D., is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist and research scientist specializing in sexual assault prevention.  Her work includes more than 15 years of experience developing and evaluating theory-driven and empirically-based sexual assault prevention approaches for youth and adults. Dr. Orchowski has received research funding from the National Institutes of Health, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and the U.S. Department of Defense.  Her research is presented in more than 75 peer-review journal articles and book chapters.  She is the Co-Editor of two books addressing sexual assault prevention, including "Sexual Assault Risk Reduction and Resistance: Theory, Research and Practice" (2018), and a forthcoming volume addressing strategies for engaging boys and men in sexual assault prevention.

Kimberly Hieftje, Ph.D., is Deputy Director at the Yale Center for Health and Learning Games, Director at play4REAL Lab at Yale University, and Research Scientist at Yale University. She created the Game Playbook, that refines behavior change theories and aligns those theories to digital app mechanics. Dr. Hieftje has managed the development and evaluation of video game interventions focused on risk reduction across numerous projects for the National Institutes of Health, CVS Health Foundation, the Women’s Research Center at Yale University, and Occulus.