“Our team is passionate about our putting our expertise to work on World Wise, because we want to build a world of global citizens who care about people, respect animals and protect the places where all of us live together.”
PRODUCTION COMPANY
Maiden Voyage Productions creates media that fosters social and cultural awareness, including multi-platform experiences, films books, apps, websites and curriculum materials. The products and programs are intended for distribution through online social networks, broadcast on public and cable media and dissemination to schools, libraries and the general public. A California 501 (c) 3 (94-3191142)
PRODUCTION TEAM
Gail Evenari
SERIES PRODUCER/CO-DIRECTOR
Founder and Executive Director of Maiden Voyage Productions, Gail has spent over 40 years producing and marketing media for multiple platforms in corporate, nonprofit and educational sectors. She has a foundation in classroom teaching and interdisciplinary, project-based curriculum design and is an award-winning filmmaker of documentaries with a focus on indigenous cultures.
Barry Pousman
CO-DIRECTOR/EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
Barry Pousman is an award-winning filmmaker and content producer. Formerly the Director of Programming at Discovery Communications and a Chief Digital Strategist at the United Nations, Barry has spent his career creating content with top-tier organizations to bring about real-world change. His two most recent projects were underwritten by Facebook and Google.
Gabo Arora
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
Gabo Arora was the first-ever Creative Director at the United Nations and the Founder and President of LightShed. With years creating award-winning social action films, Gabo has become a powerful force for impact around the world. Gabo received degrees from NYU and Johns Hopkins University, a 2016 World Economic Forum Arts and Cultural leader, and a term-member at the council on Foreign Relations.
Susan Rivers, PhD
CHIEF GAME DESIGNER
Susan is Executive Director and Chief Scientist at iThrive Games. Susan has a Ph.D. from Yale, is a social psychologist, and comes to iThrive with a fascination for how environments can be designed to propel learning, foster social connections, and support identity formation. 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.
ADVISORS
MEDIA
Donna Mitroff, Ph.D., Education and Children’s Media Consultant
Donna has three decades of experience in the entertainment industry, including her career launch at WQED, the Pittsburgh Public Television, Fox Kids and the Fox Family Network and current clients—Netflix, Univision and others. She has worked with production companies, networks and studios in the areas of program development, educational content design and review, children and families and media use, media policy, and media impact. Her department at Fox Family Channel established a new vision for digital age Standards and Practices. She teaches and presents at conferences on children and media.
Erin Reilly, Education Media and VR Consultant
Erin works at the intersection of academia and industry helping others to understand and strategize about storytelling, engagement, play and learning through emergent technology. She is an independent consultant and a Research Fellow for USC’s Annenberg Innovation Lab. Erin was on the founding team of the UCLA Annenberg Innovation Lab and was Research Director for Project New Media Literacies at MIT. As a researcher, strategist and creator, Erin is currently focused on investigating new forms of engagement and storytelling in augmenting our public spaces, virtual reality and over the top programming. A frequent lecturer worldwide at universities and industry conferences, Erin is the Board President of NAMLE and serves on advisory boards, such as Disney Junior and PBS.
Mark Schlichting, Kids Interactive App Content Development
Mark is a well-known pioneer of the children's multimedia and interactive design industry with over 30 years of design, publishing, and creative management experience. Mark is probably best known as the creator of Broderbund's Living Books, one of the first interactive CD-ROM titles and an early benchmark for educational multimedia. Mark’s book “Just Grandma and Me” sold over 4 million copies and was the multimedia de facto standard by Microsoft. His consulting company, NoodleWorks Interactive, specializes in children’s interactive design, development, and social networking. Clients include LeapFrog, eScore - Learning Centers, Pearson Broadband (Educational Division, London), Fisher/Price, Electronic Arts
EDUCATION
Bill Hunter, Ph.D., Global Competence Consultant
Bill is a world-renowned global competence researcher, assessment developer, and subject matter expert. He began his seminal research on global competence in 1999, and has interwoven the topic into various international experiential learning opportunities across the educational spectrum. He has also served as Lehigh University’s Representative to the United Nations for nearly 15 years, establishing an international reputation as an advocate for youth empowerment, global workforce development, global citizenship, and gender equality. He created the world's first UN Youth Representative program, and was the first to pilot the UN's virtual reality series in the United States. Hunter earned his Ed.D. from Lehigh University, with a focus on global competence.
Michael Carter, Ph.D., Education and Digital Media Consultant
Michael advises incubators, seed funds and startups that seek to change the landscape of learning. He provides strategy, research, design and development with a focus on learning, digital media and games. He oversaw educational new media research and technology-rich classrooms at Apple’s Advanced Technology Group, and funded laboratories worldwide. As Co-Principal Investigator of an ethnographic study of digital youth, Michael helped scholars and teachers learn what kids do online. As Chief Playwright at Zookazoo.com, he designed and produced games for kids in a virtual world. He works with LifeLiqe, a company producing digital science curriculum that engages students with interactive 3D models.
Peter Bearman, Ph.D., Evaluation Designer
Peter is a specialist in social science, demographic research design and evaluation at Columbia University. Director of INCITE, the Cole Professor of Social Science, and Co-Director of the Health & Society Scholars Program. He is the co-founder and former co-director of the Oral History Master of Arts program at Columbia University, as well as, the founding director of ISERP, serving from the Institute's launch in 2000 until 2008. He co-designed the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. A recipient of the NIH Director's Pioneer Award in 2007, Peter investigated the social determinants of the autism epidemic and has also conducted research in historical sociology.