speakers
“Age friendly New York City focuses on keeping the resources and opportunities of the city available to us all as we age. Each intersection that is made safer for older adults opens up more of the city,” – Ruth Finkelstein
“We’re looking at the notion of how to equip kids in the 21st century to be flexible, adaptive learners.” – Katie Salen
Ruth Finkelstein, ScD is the Vice President for Health Policy at The New York Academy of Medicine, where she directs policy initiatives to promote healthy aging, to improve population health by preventing disease and to reduce disparities, particularly among drug users, people returning from prison and immigrants. Dr. Finkelstein has over thirty years’ experience conducting research and evaluation projects and working in the policy and advocacy arenas to remove barriers to health access for vulnerable populations. She directs the Age-friendly New York City initiative (a joint project with the Mayor’s Office and the City Council) and authored Toward An Age Friendly New York City: A Findings Report, based on a year-long assessment with hundreds of older New Yorkers. Dr. Finkelstein is also Director of the World Health Organization’s Collaborating Centre on Aging, Globalization and Urbanization and has provided technical assistance to several U.S. and international cities on age friendly city initiatives.
Katie Salen is Professor of Games and Digital Media at DePaul University, and former Director of the Center for Transformative Media, a research center focused on emerging trends in design and media at Parsons the New School for Design. She locates her work in the field of game design and serves as the Executive Director of a non-profit called the Institute of Play that is focused on games and learning. Katie led the team that founded Quest to Learn in 2009, a 6-12th grade public school in New York City, as well as ChicagoQuest, a 6-12 charter school that opened fall 2011 in Chicago. Katie is co-author of Rules of Play, a textbook on game design, The Game Design Reader, Quest to Learn: Growing a School for Digital Kids, and editor of The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning, all from MIT Press. She has worked as a game designer for over 12 years and is a former co-editor of The International Journal of Learning and Media. She was an early advocate of the then-hidden world of machinima and continues to be interested in connections between game design, learning, and transformative modes of play.
