Heather Kelley is an award winning video game designer, a game activist and a media artist, and, according to the Fast Company, 'one of the most influential women in technology.' Heather is co-founder of the Kokoromi experimental game collective, with whom she produces and curates the annual Gamma game event promoting experimental games as creative expression in a social context. Her career in the games industry has included AAA next-gen console games, interactive smart toys, handheld games and web communities for girls. Heather was Creative Director on the UNFPA Electronic Game to End Gender Violence, at the Emergent Media Center at Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont. For seven years, Heather served as co-chair of the IGDA's Women in Game Development Special Interest Group.
Her biographical sex game concept with Erin Robinson, "Our First Times," won the 2009 GDC Game Design Challenge, and her game concept "Lapis" based on female masturbation won the 2006 MIGS Game Design Challenge. With the well-received 2012 exhibition Joue Le Jeue at La Gaîté Lyrique in Paris, France, she focussed the curation on new narratives, game styles and innovative aesthetics that are different from familiar game industry blockbusters.
