Announcing the Well-being by Design Fellows

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center is thrilled to announce the 10 fellows who have joined our inaugural Well-being by Design Fellowship, which is supported by Pinterest and foundry10. The fellows were selected from a pool of nearly 100 talented applicants through a rigorous review process. The organizations that our fellows represent range from small to large companies; all of them share a passion for creating great digital experiences for young people.

The purpose of the fellowship is to promote “well-being by design” as an aspirational and accessible goal for industry professionals. Over the next four months, the fellows will meet regularly as a learning community. They will workshop ideas informed by well-being and child development frameworks and apply them to their work on digital products for kids. The Cooney Center will support the fellows via workshops, consultations with industry experts and young people, and collaborative learning opportunities as they make progress on their respective designs.

As the fellowship concludes, we will publish the fellows’ work in case studies that explain their approach and highlight the new features that will support well-being in their digital products for kids. We also plan to launch an online community to make these ideas available to all who are interested in kids’ media and well-being. Please sign up if you’d like to stay up to date.

Meet our fellows!

 

	Javier Agüera Pandora’s Way Javier is an inventor, social entrepreneur, and co-founder of Pandora’s Way. He is passionate about humane technology design. He will focus on transforming when and how parents give their first devices to their kids, informed by the latest insights from behavioral science, and is committed to designing products in a more human-aligned way.
	Franceli Cibrian Chapman University Franceli is an Assistant Professor at the Dale E. and Sarah Ann Fowler School of Engineering at Chapman University. Her research lies at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), assistive technology, ubiquitous computing, pervasive healthcare, and Artificial Intelligence (AI). She will focus on promoting self-regulation in neurodiverse children using wearables, such as smart watches.
	Grace Collins Snowbright Studio Grace is the Founder/CEO of Snowbright Studio, an award-winning Cleveland-based LGBTQ+ game studio dedicated to publishing heartwarming games and experiences. They will focus on Time Tails: Civics – an upcoming digital interactive adventure game and companion civics curriculum designed to help students learn about and practice civics.
	Taylor Davis iCivics Taylor is the Director of Curriculum and Content at iCivics, managing the Curriculum Team and overseeing the scope, voice, and depth of iCivics curricular resources. She will focus on Private i History Detectives, a collection of inquiry-based units and lessons for elementary students to investigate primary sources and collect evidence to help them draw conclusions and develop claims to historical questions.
	Kimberly Dowd Google Kimberly, a Senior UX Researcher at Google, is committed to global research and building equitable products. Her focus is on delivering helpful, equitable experiences for young people and families using Google Search, whose mission is to make the world’s information universally accessible and useful.
	Melissa Gedney PBS KIDS Melissa is the Senior Manager of the Learn Together Project at PBS KIDS, supporting co-design of content and experiences to foster intergenerational moments between kids and their grown-ups. She will focus on workshopping and identifying ways to integrate curated family- and educator-facing resources alongside kids’ products that add value and play to their media experience.
	Carissa Kang Roblox Carissa is a Principal User Researcher at Roblox, leading research on helping teens connect and communicate with friends and finding like-minded communities. She will focus on ways to promote healthy socialization and to provide teens with more control and options over their experience. The ultimate goal is to foster more engaging and rich communication experiences, while considering teens’ needs.
	Olivia Levenson Korchagin Global Tinker Olivia co-founded Global Tinker, a multi award-winning children’s media company harnessing the power of stories, constructionist pedagogy, and ubiquitous technology to inspire kids to create more and consume less. She will focus on “Breathe, Make, & Flourish,” a multidisciplinary mental health platform designed for caretakers to help foster resilience in preschoolers who have endured traumatic experiences.
	Aatash Parikh Inkwire Aatash launched Inkwire, a project-based learning and digital portfolio platform for schools, used by tens of thousands of students. He will focus on a new AI-powered curriculum design tool to help teachers design projects that are both engaging for their students as well as cover academic standards, with the goal of reigniting young people’s sense of purpose and excitement for learning.
	Keeana Saxon Kidogo Productions As the Founder and CEO of Kidogo Productions, Inc., a digital media company for kids, Keeana promotes Black Joy and Excellence through videos, games, and live events. She is building Kidogo’s first app, which will allow Kidogo Kids to stream videos and play games, connecting passive content to interactive content.