CEO of Sea Monster Entertainment and Chairperson of Games for Change Africa. EO Member.
Last week I had the privilege of being part of the launch of the RITEC toolkit with UNICEF, The LEGO Foundation and Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop. RITEC offers a framework for the responsible way to design for children's well being. It made me remember that children have a superpower—a unique ability to strip away complexity and see the world for what it is. They remind us that joy can be found in the simplest experiences and that sometimes, our learned behaviours hold us back. Simon Sinek says we should ask "Why" five times to explore big ideas. But your average six-year-old asks "Why" five times an hour. In this age of AI, it’s not about the answers—it’s about asking the right questions. Frameworks like RITEC help us structure those questions, offering a way to think critically and address the world’s most pressing challenges. We’re facing a crisis in education—one that spans climate change, misinformation, future skills, and the digital divide. Addressing these challenges requires more than raising awareness. It demands action, agency, and new ways of thinking. We need a framework that is credible, practical, research-driven, globally inclusive, scalable, and rooted in the shared humanity that binds us. Games have a powerful role to play. For grant makers and corporate decision-makers, RITEC simplifies the science behind impactful design. For learning and behaviour change experts, it provides familiar principles in accessible, actionable ways. And for marketers, RITEC offers guardrails to ensure games create shared value and build brand equity—not just short-term commercial results. Games uniquely engage audiences, inspire action, and help people realise they have agency in their own stories. Kids remind us that tomorrow can be better than yesterday. The future is only hopeless if we choose not to act. As designers, we must keep humans at the heart of every experience we create. The future is ahead of us—let’s build it intentionally. Thank you to the incredible panel and contributors Nate Sawatzky Mathilde Heegaard Bausager Anna Wendelin Petter Karlsson Shuli Gilutz, Ph.D. Michael Preston Ida Margarita Hyllested