Have you ever met someone so dedicated to their genius that it comes through in everything they say and do? That's Eghosa, our Manager of Marketing. She shines when she is storytelling and using personal stories to generate awareness, ignite action, and mobilize support for social justice-oriented causes.

With a BA from Binghamton University and an MPA from Cornell University, Eghosa was drawn to iThrive because of its mission. She believes that creating a more just and more loving world cannot happen without the sustained investment in the emotional and social wellbeing of teens. In her work at iThrive, Eghosa is obsessively detail-oriented, ensuring that innovative tactics are applied, thoroughly analyzed and fine-tuned so that we are amplifying teen voices and promoting our work as effectively as possible.

When it's time to relax, you'll find Eghosa sipping chamomile tea and watching nature documentaries, or maybe writing, painting, taking museum trips with friends, or indulging in a Family Feud marathon with her family.

Dorothy is iThrive's founder and President of its Board of Directors. She also is the president of the D.N. Batten Foundation. She's a mentor and source of inspiration for all of us at iThrive and we couldn't ask for a better founder. Through the foundation, she makes grants to support innovative approaches to tackle mental health and environmental conservation issues. Spending time with her sons made her realize just how stressed teenagers are these days and that we can help them.

Dorothy's dreams are as big as her heart. She works tirelessly to support community programming in Charlottesville, VA and serves on several boards including RARE.org, the Women's Initiative, and the Focused Ultrasound Surgery Foundation. She believes that the world could be designed better to help teens thrive, and her vision for iThrive is that designing meaningful experiences is one way to make that happen.

Have you ever been totally disarmed by someone's sheer talent for transfiguring research into digestible resources? We have. Let us expelliarmus this out for you: Michelle is our Senior Director of Learning with an MA from Yale and she draws on a decade of experience in social and emotional learning to lead our efforts in the education space to co-design game-based learning experiences with and for teens.

Michelle believes adults often underestimate teens and advocates that they're doing exactly what they should be: preparing to venture out and become new leaders. Michelle helps them do that by integrating gameplay into their development and inviting them to cast a spell on their emotional growth.

When it's time to relax, Michelle loves to kick back in the Ravenclaw common room and earn some house points in Lego Harry Potter.

If there's one thing right off the bat that you should know about Sierra, it's that she radiates kindness and curiosity. She's a proud military wife, mother, dog owner, and runner and holds a BA in Journalism & Mass Communications from the University of South Carolina. She is also, apparently, a superhero because she has three young kids and still has time to be our Program Coordinator.

Sierra comes to iThrive with a passion for writing, learning new things, and making the world a better place - which is good, because we're passionate about those things, too. She was especially drawn to the part of our mission that involves meeting teens through the medium of games and empowering them to become who they want to be; she hopes to someday use her insight from iThrive to guide her children on their own journey!

We're really, really PMP'd about Jane, our Senior Director of Operations & Mental Health with a B.A. in psychology from Syracuse University. If you're ever trapped in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, Jane is the person you want with you: trust us. Jane keeps our team surviving and thriving by designing systems, informing strategy, solving problems, and directing the team to produce excellent programs.

Existing systems tend to only encourage a small percentage of teens to thrive: Jane's mission is to disrupt those systems with new technology and design environments where all teens can thrive. Part of Jane's role at iThrive is to direct the production of game and program assets, and she's an asset in so many more ways.

An active gamer, Jane is thrilled that iThrive allows her to combine two passions: games and psychology. She believes games can strengthen skills like pattern literacy, logic, teamwork and creative problem solving.

What can young people discover about themselves and find solutions to when given the mentorship, cognitive tools, and support to thrive?

Janelle has dedicated her career serving youth in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to finding out. As a former social worker and teacher, and founder of Transition HOPE, a program designed to give system-involved youth purpose, pathways, and encouragement, Janelle understands the importance of building relationships with young people to support them and has done so for the last 15 years.

Since joining the Boston chapter of the NAACP's Executive Board and building on her interest in social justice, she has worked to amplify young people's voices, stories, and ideas in research, policy, and academic spaces. As chair of the MPP Economic and Racial Equity concentration at The Heller School for Social Policy and Management, and co-founder of the SEED Institute, she is lit up by opportunities to foster reciprocal learning between young people and stakeholders who develop the policies and programs that serve them.

A self-described "nerd by nature" when she isn't working, Janelle enjoys reading, writing, and spending time with her kids.

You know how every team has that person who just makes things work? That's Susan. She leads the charge on iThrive's strategy, navigating around and through all obstacles that come in the way of the team achieving our mission.

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.

Susan loves a competitive game of Sushi Go or UNO with her three kids and husband.

Julia Roberto is the Program Manager for the SEED Institute, where she supports the youth designers throughout the game development process and steers outreach and collaborations with other youth-serving organizations.

With a B.A. in Secondary Education and an M.Ed. in Teacher of Students with Moderate Disabilities 5-12 from Lesley University, Julia is motivated by her lifelong focus on supporting others. After working as a special education teacher and the social-emotional learning coordinator at her local public school, Julia has found her home in iThrive's work. She is driven by social justice and believes that listening to and uplifting the voices of youth and vulnerable populations is the key to a more equitable society.

In her spare time, Julia teaches Early Childhood Education at Bunker Hill Community College and loves to play fetch with her cat, Sokka.

Christina has 15+ years of strategy, operations, and financial management experience across the private and nonprofit sectors, focusing on ed-tech, K-12 education, and startups. Christina's key strengths include financial strategy, organization transformation, talent enablement, and business coaching.

Christina began her career as a high school English teacher, serving as a district-appointed Master Teacher during her tenure, and continued to serve in management and operational leadership positions within global nonprofits, including Teach For America, and ed-tech companies, including Blackboard Inc. Seeing a need for to support social impact organizations with their reach, effectiveness, and sustainability, she founded and now leads Jackson Scott Advisory (JSA), an organizational management and financial consulting firm.

Christina holds a Nonprofit Management Executive Certificate from Georgetown University, an MBA from Marymount University, a BA in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a Certified Nonprofit Accounting Professional (CNAP) Certificate. She was born and raised in the Carolinas, and currently resides in Washington, DC with her husband.