Susan Rivers

Susan has a PhD from Yale, is a social psychologist, and leads the iThrive Games Foundation team with a fascination for how environments can be designed to propel learning, foster social connections, and support identity formation and resilience. She passionately believes that game design and play are powerful tools for learning about the self, forging meaningful connections with others, helping emotional development grow in an authentic way, and making the world a better place for all humans. While she has designed meaningful environments for humans of all ages, she is particularly focused on teens now and is committed to listening and learning with and from teens. Susan is author of dozens of scholarly articles and several social and emotional learning curricula and speaks to audiences nationally and internationally.