2343 Conversations

Shawn co-founded a unique character design studio, Shawnimals—created with his wife over 10 years ago. Hundreds of characters inhabit those worlds and live through toys, murals, and videogames. The ninjas from Ninjatown transformed from handmade plush toys to vinyl creations, posters, stickers, calendars, keychains, and mobile apps. He grew up admiring Japanese and American pop-culture, with a passion that morphed from early doodles to characters like the Wee Ninja from Ninjatown, Moustachios, Pocket Pork Dumplings, and many, many more. His designer toys have seen success with Kidrobot and Rotofugi, apparel with Mimoco, David and Goliath, and Smash Transit. Shwan created original art for companies like MailChimp, Basecamp, LiveNation, Twisted Hyppo, Dark Matter Coffee, Cards Against Humanity, Revolution Brewing, and others—not to mention comics, and video games for Nintendo, iOS, and Android.

Rachael began her career in improvisation at Skidmore College, home of the National College Comedy Festival, with the Ad-Liberal Artists. After graduating with a degree in English Literature (concentrating on Shakespearean Studies) she moved to Chicago to study improv comedy with Del Close. Currently the head of Advanced Improvisation at The Second City, she created the Dramatic Improv programs as well as The History of Satire Series for The Second City Training Center. Rachael has performed musical improv with Baby Wants Candy at The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, directed and performed at The Annoyance Theater, and she was Training Center Director at iO Theater for 8 years. She is part of the cast of The Second City Improv All-Stars and performs in The Boys, with Susan Messing.

Sandor Weisz is the founder of The Mystery League, a company of creative puzzlemakers who stage live games. He developed large scale puzzles and games at locations like the Chicago Art Institute, the Lincoln Park Zoo or the Harold Washington Library. A Northwestern University graduate, Sandor transitioned to working full time on the Mystery League from a career as a software and web developer. He currently focuses on creating tabletop puzzle games and shares a new puzzle every day on Twitter via his account @pzlr.

Lanny Fox (Pam Who?!) is a brilliant writer, actor, comedian, and drag performer exploring through comedy and satire controversial social themes. He has written and performed with The Second City, The Annoyance Theater, and The iO Comedy Network in Chicago. He is also a student of The New York University Tisch School of the Arts.

Ben is an artist focused on the cultural, social, and political effects of software. What do computers mean for human creativity? How does software design affect our behavior and ideas of friendship and relationship? Faculty member at the University of Illinois, his artworks have been featured in The New Yorker, Wired, The Atlantic, and more. Ben's projects include Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter Demetricator. Would not seeing likes and retweets make a difference in your online experience? His latest work is Order of Magnitude, a supercut that examines what Mark Zuckerberg focuses on by extracting a few words he says regularly.

The improviser from The Second City, the iO, and The Annoyance on how to navigate the unknown and your reality, moment by moment.

Mark Larson is a writer, interviewer, educator, and curator of many oral history projects like American Stories Continuum and Ensemble, Chicago collecting and sharing conversations about contemporary life in the United States. Professor at National-Louis University, Mark also published two books: 'Making Conversations' and 'Situations' (co-authored with Betty Jane Wagner). Inspired by Studs Terkel's work, Mr. Larson's interviews are intimate portraits of subjective experiences in our communities, shining a light (one voice at a time) on our shared social experience as human beings.

Melissa McEwen is a tech consultant and writer merging two passions and careers, publishing articles for Quartz, Submain, on Medium and more. You can check out her website and social media profiles by visiting melissamcewen.com.

Tim Kazurinsky is an actor, screenwriter, Saturday Night Live alumnus, and performer from the Police Academy series as Officer Sweetchuck. In the early 80s, Mr. Kazurinsky played iconic characters on SNL, like Jack Badofsky on Weekend Update, Mr Landlord, Gandhi, Hitler, and even a chimp's husband in "I Married a Monkey". As a two times Jefferson Awards nominee, Tim's experience on live stages started with the Second City in Chicago and goes on to these days as the Wizard of Oz in Wicked's itinerating company, and with the Broadway play An Act of God. He is the screenwriter of the movie About Last Night, and shared screen and stage with John Belushi, Eddie Murphy, Robin Williams, Bill Murray, Sharon Stone, and more.

Scott Robbin, web developer and co-creator with Naz Hamid of Vapid, an intentionally simple content management system to create websites. Starting in the late 90s, Mr. Robbin founded different companies like Halobrite and Songza, and also worked as lead developer and director for Cards Agains Humanity, Blackbox, and more. You can check out his projects on srobbin.com and learn more about Vapid, his latest creation, on vapid.com.

Cody Gough is a radio host, producer, and audio editor. For over a decade he worked as a producer and content creator with WGN Radio, GonnaGeek Network, and Curiosity.com. Mr. Gough's skills help shows to take shape and become even more successful while he works with hosts like Spike O'Dell, Brian Noonan, Nick Digilio, Steve King and Johnnie Putnam, Milt Rosenberg, and Pete McMurray. He hosts the award-winning, daily curiosity.com podcast and Game/Life Balance U.S., a lifestyle show.

Linnea Gandhi is adjunct professor of Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago Booth and founder of BehavioralSight—an advisory firm helping businesses to integrate insights and methodologies from behavioral science into their research and decision-making processes. Linnea also coaches leaders on ways to reduce error in their own everyday decisions. Her work has been published in Harvard Business Review. Prof. Gandhi has also written and spoken about topics such as noise in decision-making, nudging strategies, and experimentation in business. She aims to teach students to understand and design for the nature, causes, and implications of human decision-making patterns in real-world settings.

Jen Ellison is an actor, writer, director, and professor focusing on comedy and theatre. Throughout her career, Ms. Ellison performed and directed at ComedySportz, Collaboraction, The Neo-Futurists, and The Second City, the legendary improv theater where Steve Carell, Tina Fey, Key and Peele, and Stephen Colbert first learned how to be be funny on stage. As a professor, she is the former lead of an Ethics in Gaming class, analyzing how we, as players, can become somebody else, living through another point of view, experience empahty, and how videogames and cinema are powerful tools of storytelling and human connection. Jen also mentors students on how to become funnier at Columbia College Chicago by teaching comedy classes in the Comedy Studies program. You can check out her work both on stage, and throuhg "Drunk JCrew", a parody of Jcrew's adversiting shots on Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook pages.

Byron Reese is an entrapreneur, public speaker and author, currently CEO and Publisher of GigaOM, a leading technology research company. As a technologist and futurist, Mr. Reese brings his passion for history and philosophy to the readers shining a light on social dilemmas that we already face, and will face, as humans. His most recent book, The Fourth Age, explores the essence of humanity through the lenses of philosophy applied to technological change, using an objective yet positive light on how the coming age of machine automation and AI will reshape our futures potentially ending war, ignorance, disease, hunger, povery, and war—while also exploring less favorable scenarios that humanity should do its best to avoid.

Ashley Ray is a comedian, writer, and TV critic sharing her personal stories and ideas while touching important topics like gender, race, and sexuality. As a cultural critic, Ashley writes for The A.V. Club, Vice, and The Chicago Reader.

Dakota Conduct is a Supply Chain Analyst by the day, and drag queen by night. Living in the duality of corporate daytime professional and gender-bending drag queen in nightlife, she shows how knowledge can only further enhance her drag aesthetic.

RadioPublic's CEO and co-founder Jake Shapiro talks about RadioPublic's stragety, business model, and risks, discussing how to create a sustainable marketplace for podcast creators and listeners while contributing to the development of open standards and a decentralized ecosystem.  

Ali Barthwell is the co-founder of WakandaCon, a celebration of afro-futurism and black culture in a society that stripped african-americans of their past. She is a writer, performer and comedian teaching her students how to use sterotypes on gender, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation as a tool of growth for themselves and their audiences.  

Thomas Thorson is a landscape architect and urban designer interpreting the physical world to interconnect people in an urban environment. He serves on the Board of Directors at the Cliff Dwellers Club, an historic and iconic arts club in downtown Chicago. You can find more about Tom visiting https://cliff-chicago.org.  

Neal Sáles-Griffin is an entrapreneur, teacher, and an educational leader born and raised in the Chicago South Side, currently CEO of CodeNow, a national nonprofit teaching young people how to code in order to solve problems and become creators of their own future. Professor at Nortwhestern, University of Chicago Booth, and teacher for the Chicago Public Schools empowering high schoolers with skills from software development to business creation basics in the tech field, Mr. Sáles-Griffin is a 30yo running as a Chicago mayor candidate as an outsider, but one who comes from the community in times where being a poilitical outsider means coming from the entertainment field. You can read more about his projects, resumé and platform, by visiting nealformayor.com.  

Anne Libera is an author, writer, comedy professor and researcher. She created the Comedy Studies program at Columbia College Chicago.

Nate DuFort is a writer, producer, and director who splits his time between Detroit and Chicago. Mr. Dufort is a consultant for The Second City, having previously served as Producer, Producing Director, and Producing Artistic Director there, overseeing projects in cooperation between the iconic comedy theater and the Lyric Opera of Chicago or Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, managing the partnership at sea between Second City and Norwegian Cruise Line and taking part in the annual Gilda’s Club of Chicago fundraiser Night of a Thousand Noogies. Nate served on the Board of Directors for Planet Ant Theatre in Hamtramck, Michigan and as the Director of the Planet Ant Film & Video Festival. He currently produces the podcast My Neighbors Are Dead available at myneighborsaredead.com.  

Danielle Feinberg is a storyteller using light as her narrative tool. With over 2 decades of experience at Pixar Animation Studios, Ms. Feinberg inspires younger generations of all genders and communities to become artists through technology. Her work can be admired in Academy Award nominated movies, like Coco and Brave.  

Dave Hoover is a Code crafter formally trained in psychology and family therapy, Mr. Hoover is a software developer using the Ethereum blockchain and co-author of the book "Apprenticeship Patterns: Guidance for the Aspiring Software Craftsman". He also co-founded the dev bootcamp, to enable anyone to learn software development skills in a matter of weeks.  

Artistic Director of "500 Clown"—a physical theater company that uses clown and humor to get the audience's active attention—Adrian Danzig has performed at The Goodman theater, The Steppenwolf, The Second City, Berkeley Rep, and much more. A Brooklyn native, Adrian is an actor, director, teacher and alumnus of The School of the Art Institute Chicago, and also studied clown with world-famous physical theater performers like Philippe Gaulier and Dominique Jando. Through his work, Mr. Danzig aims to explore with the audience how the body can display and elaborate the full range of human emotions, from joy and happiness and particularly to fear and anger, with his company producing shows like "500 Clown MacBeth" or "500 Clown Frankenstein".  

Lisa Wagner-Carollo is an agent of social change. Through theater, social justice, and spirituality, for almost 30 years she has been making an effort to reach marginalized communities through art. As founding director of the Still Point Theater Collective, Ms. Wagner-Carollo works with adults with developmental disabilities, currently and formerly incarcerated women, and senior citizens both on and off stage to become a catalyst of systemic change. As a performer Lisa is on stage with Haunted by God, her solo show performed around the world and based on the life of Dorothy Day. Her most recent book is Above, Along, Inside, and Through: Poems, Prayers, and Reflections.  

Okamura-san is the CEO of Grounding, an independent video-game company based in Japan and currently developing the virtual reality sequel to one of SEGA's most successful and bizarre games ever: Space Channel 5, a visionary music game first released in the late 90s where Ulala, a space news reporter in the 25th century, saves humanity by defeating evil aliens through dance moves and singing, sometimes even helped by Michael Jackson as Space Michael. As one of the few executive women and entrepreneurs in a male-dominated videogames industry, before founding her own company Okamura-san worked on many legendary SEGA games and developers like Tetsuya Mizuguchi's REZ, a musical shooter inspired by Kandinskji's work as a painter.  

Currently the "Executive Director of Insights and Applied Improvisation" at the iconic theater The Second City, Kelly Leonard is an improviser who doesn't perform on stage. He applies the constructive principles behind improvisational theater in business and everyday life. He studies ways to improve business models and culture by navigating uncertainty, with failure as the base for success. Kelly condensed his 3 decades of experience at The Second City and conjoined behavioral studies at the University of Chicago in his book, co-authored with Tom Yorton, titled "Yes And" and his podcast "Getting to Yes And".  

Dr. Luca Badetti tries to embrace both abilities and inabilities, arguing that this is the best way to become a more complete and connected human being: by encountering disability. Professor at Loyola and DePaul University, as Director of Community Life at L'Arche holding a PhD in Disability Studies, in his TED talk Luca shares powerful stories from his live-in experience with persons with and without intellectual disabilities, inviting everyone to befriend and accept their own perceived limitations to stimulate human growth.  

Gourmet chef and porn star with a military background, Jack Vidra is a model working in the adult entertainment industry nominated as Best Newcomer for the 2017 Grabby Awards, celebrating the adult erotic video industry. Featured in movies from hothouse and tyrant studios, Jack has recently published an essay titled ‘Do something that scares you’, where he shares his pat h from joining the Marine Corps to becoming a chef and then an adult worker; a process that guided him to discover a better and more accept himself, able to appreciate the differences that make each one of us unique, physically and emotionally. His strength does not come just from the body, but through the body, it lets the soul grow and improve.  

David Dewane is an architect and journalist working to create a better world through design and social change serving as Community Director of Archeworks, and formerly as the editor in chief for Impact Design Hub, both dedicated to expanding the role of design in society in order to create better social environments. Mr. Dewane also founded the Mouse Book Club, a project that thanks to a successful kickstarter campaign, aims to replace a commuter's smartphone with classic novels, speeches, essays, and poetry through phone-sized, 48 pages long books to enrich minds by sharing meaningful literature.  

Jonathan Mayo is an artist and creator behind Cleaning Closets, an oral history project that collects and shares true coming out stories from both sides of the closet door, both from the perspective of LGBTQ people as well as the family and friends they come out to. Mr. Mayo's goal sharing all the points of view so they can help us find common ground and make the coming out process easier for everyone involved. Through stage plays, a web series, photos, and a film documentary, Jonathan hosts panels in schools around the country to reach out with honesty and courage a diverse crowd spanning around all ages, genders, ethnicities, and sexual orientations to work as a catalyst towards a more empathic coming out process. You can read, listen, and watch all the stories he collected on cleaningclosets.org  

Ms. Halpern mentored comedy legends like Tina Fey, Stephen Colbert, Amy Poehler, and Cecily Strong—while building a comedy empire with her iO Theater, home of 'The Harold' (the improv format she created with Del Close).  

Using videogames as an artistic medium. Jason Rohrer is an independent game artist and creator of the videogames "One Hour One Life", "Immortality", and "Passage"—currently part of the New York MoMA permanent collection.  

Cathy Pearl is one of the few experts in the rising field of designing computers with a voice, working in the San Francisco Bay Area for over two decades and experimenting to create a more natural, conversational way to interact with the devices that help us connect every day. Her book "Designing Voice User Interfaces", published by O'Reilly, is recognized as one of the main texts on the subject by her colleagues who design smart chatbots and general assistants used daily by millions of people.  

Prof. Dominic A. Pacyga is a historian and researcher who analyzes the city of Chicago not just as an urban conglomerate, but as the collective and diverse story of settlers, immigrants, and locals who built it through their flesh and turned it into the "most American city". Teaching for over four decades, at Columbia College and the University of Chicago, his book—published by the University of Chicago Press— and titled "Chicago: A Biography" is a vivid portrait of the quintessential skyscraper jungle. His work as an author appeals both academics and individuals, with the exploration of the "city of neighborhoods".  

David Pasquesi is one of the most experienced improvisers currently performing on stage, focused on exploring the moment together with the audience, and not just performing for the audience. His Chicago and New York based show Tj&Dave—with his stage partner TJ Jagodowski—surprises hundreds every week not just because it’s funny, but for its honest search and discovery of connections that just a moment earlier did not exist. From The Second City to Hollywood, as an actor Dave has performed for theatre, commercials, movies, and TV shows including Groundhog Day, God of Carnage, Strangers with Candy, Veep, Curb your Enthusiasm, At Home with Amy Sedaris, and many different films directed by Harold Ramis. He was also part of the original group developing The Harold, the first long form improvisation conceived by Del Close as a self-enclosed structure in the ’80s and still performed at Charna Halpern’s iO Theater Chicago. His recently published book, co-authored with Tj Jagodowski and Pam Victor, is Improvisation at the Speed of Life.