ConverJent projects are often collaborations between numerous talented artists, designers, researchers, scholars, and engineers. This page includes team members across multiple projects.

Click here to see a list of people who worked specifically on Jewish Time Jump: New York.

Rabbi Owen Gottlieb, Ph.D.
ConverJent Founder and Director; Game Designer
Rabbi Gottlieb brings an eclectic background in game and interactive media design, software development, writing for film and television, secular scholarship, and the rabbinate to Games for Jewish Learning.

His work in the Jewish community has been featured in The Daily Forward, The Huffington Post, Contact Magazine, Sh’ma, The Jewish Week, The CCAR Journal, and other publications. His teams’ games have been featured at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) Arcade, Indiecade, Now Play This London, the Boston Independent Games Festival, Games for Change, Meaningful Play, Serious Play Conference, and numerous other venues.

Gottlieb founded ConverJent in 2010 to bring the latest in research on the power of Games for Learning and game design to the Jewish community. Games can enhance learning environments, providing excitement and delight to Jewish learners.  In addition to digital design and development, ConverJent uses game design as a form of inquiry-based study of Jewish culture, history and sacred texts. ConverJent has received a Signature Grant from the Covenant Foundation funding a new mobile learning game to teach Jewish history.

Rabbi Gottlieb is a sought after teacher, and has taught and presented at conferences and venues around the country including the Games Learning and Society Conference, The Central Conference of American Rabbis, URJ Kutz Camp, The Hebrew Union College (NY and LA), Rabbis Without Borders, and The National Havurah Institute.

Learn more about Rabbi Gottlieb.

Jennifer Ash

Game Designer
Jennifer Ash is a user researcher and game designer, who has focused on how games can be used for meaningful play. Her work has included designing for mathematical fluency, emotional contagion and gesture, and for those who have been disabled.

Ash holds a dual-degree in Games and Simulation Arts and Sciences (BS), with a focus on Human-Computer Interaction, and Psychology (BS) from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and an M.A. in Digital Media Design for Learning from New York University. Previous professional experiences include associate game designer on Club Penguin DS at 1st Playable Productions, and User Experience Designer for z/OS and a member of the Academic Initiative for System z team at IBM. In 2012, she was selected as one of the IGDA Scholars for GDC.

Jennifer Ash is a member of the International Game Developers Association, Association for Computing Machinery, and the American Psychology Association. She has participated in various mentoring activities, largely involving STEM encouragement, often lending her knowledge and presenting on Intro to Game Design.

Ash works as a user researcher at Bungie.

Liza Singer
Illustrator
Liza Singer is currently an Asst. Producer at Scholastic Media, who spends her free time working as a freelance animator/illustrator and game designer. She received her Master’s from Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) in Interactive Narrative Design at New York University (NYU) and holds a BA in Narrative Media and Entertainment Technologies. She is a two time IGDA Scholar for E3 and CEDEC 2012 and finalist in the 2011 Microsoft Imagine Cup. Her animated installation “Breathe Life In” is currently on display at the IAC Building and was showcased at the NYU Tisch Gala 2012.

Her interdisciplinary skills as a writer, illustrator and developer enable her to seamlessly integrate all aspects of game development. She aims to push the boundaries of traditional narrative media, using game mechanics and interactivity to create individualized narrative experiences with realistic character-player relationships, to enhance and enrich storytelling as a means to entertain, educate, communicate and engage.

Justin Butler
Illustrator
Justin is an illustrator/designer from upstate New York. Visit his site.

Diane De Fazio
Archival Researcher
Diane De Fazio holds a B. A. in History from Fordham University, studied interior design and architectural history at Parsons School of Design, and earned her M. S. in Historic Preservation from Columbia University. Her graduate thesis, “Like Blood to the Veins: Escalators, their History, and the Making of the Modern World,” remains one of the only histories of the escalator ever written. A professional researcher and writer, she has worked for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYU Press, and John Wiley & Sons, as well as several other cultural institutions. She leads private walking tours of Grand Central Terminal, Brooklyn, and Manhattan.