Mary Flanagan is a leading innovator, artist, educator and designer whose works have included everything from game-inspired art to games that shift people’s thinking about biases and stereotypes. Her interest in playculture and the values embedded in games led to her acclaimed book, Critical Play, with MIT Press, and her recent book, Values at Play in Digital Games with philosopher Helen Nissenbaum is instigating conversations about values on a national level. She founded the Tiltfactor game lab to invent "humanist"games and take on social problems that can be best addressed by games. At Tiltfactor,
designers create and research catchy games that teach people something and sometimes, change their minds towards pro-social thinking.

Flanagan has been a member of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), Academic Consortium on Games for Impact and been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Institute for Justice for game projects.