About

Gene Koo

Gene Koo, Principal
Good Games Group

I am a passionate advocate for using video games and other interactive media to advance organizations’ social mission. Most recently I led the growth of iCivics, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s educational nonprofit, to become the most successful game-based curriculum in the nation. Under my leadership, iCivics:

  • Expanded our portfolio of short-form games to 18
  • Grew our teacher community to 35,000 using new media marketing
  • Developed new edtech tools including the nation’s first online tool for teaching argumentative writing under the Common Core and the first tablet-based system for creating face-to-face simulations
  • Raised $3.5M in revenues, $2.8M from new donors and partners and grew revenue sources sixfold
  • Secured and expanded partnerships with such organizations as the Boys & Girls Club of America, PBS, and BrainPop

Prior to iCivics, I led Blue State Digital’s DC-based strategic engagements with such clients as the NAACP, the Entertainment Software Association, and Human Rights Campaign. I conceived and oversaw execution of the United State Holocaust Memorial Museum’s “Remember Me” campaign, which won two Webbys in 2010.

At Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, I researched and developed new tools for legal education and helped found Hub2, a program using virtual technologies to encourage public engagement in urban design. That program continues to operate as the Engagement Game Lab at Emerson College.

I also helped found the Center for Legal Aid Education, a national professional development organization that created the nation’s first online and blended Continuing Legal Education programs to teach practice skills to poverty lawyers.

Better learning is my passion; video games happen to be one of the best ways to achieve it.

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