Louisa is a thought leader in the ed tech field, with a passion for game-based learning, playful pedagogies, and inclusive design. She has led the design and development of a variety of inclusive, playful learning experiences, contributing to research on how technology can support creative learning experiences for students and teachers. She also brings the playfulness of games into her assessment design work, creating digital and non-digital tools to help both learners and educators assess open-ended work and future-ready skills. In addition to these areas, she supports other designers and organizations in creating innovative ed tech and curriculum for deep learning. She is a co-author of the book Resonant Games, as well as the white paper Designing for Inclusion, Designing for All, and teaches a graduate course on ed tech design at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. After spending over a decade doing research on digital games and creative learning at MIT, she was most recently the Director of Learning Design at Kahoot!. She holds a B.A. in Computer Science from Brown University and an Ed.M. in Technology, Innovation, and Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Starting as a software engineer and manager at FileMaker Inc., an Apple subsidiary, I quickly realized that my true passion lay at the intersection of technology and education. That insight led me to pursue a PhD in Learning Sciences at UC Berkeley. 

Post-PhD, I took on leadership roles at SRI Education and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. At these institutions I spearheaded cross-disciplinary teams focused on creating cutting-edge learning and assessment experiences, with an emphasis on equity, designing for all learners, and how to best leverage interactive technologies for learning.

Specialties: designing solutions for a diverse learner population (with an emphasis on multilingual learners), integrating simulation-based activities into learning environments, designing and validating the use of Machine Learning models, incorporating AI into educational activities, and advising on qualitative and quantitative (gold standard) studies that define and measure the impact of innovative educational environments.

I am an experienced digital learning leader in K-12 schools in the United States and Europe and a UX researcher and designer. I specialize in technology strategic planning, professional development and digital literacy and computer science curriculum design. I work with education companies to support their research and development teams in creating impactful learning experiences. I am a Teaching Fellow at Harvard Graduate School of Education, owner and Director of Learning Design at LKR Learning Design, and Head of Learning Experience Design at the ICEI/Wikit.

I am passionate about facilitating co-design opportunities between classrooms and companies and creating successful teacher adoption and school implementation plans to ensure innovative and impactful, research-informed learning experiences.

I hold a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from the University of Notre Dame and a Master's in Educational Technologies from Harvard University.