Heidi Boisvert is a new media artist, game designer, creative
technologist, experimental filmmaker, and writer based in New York. Heidi founded
and serves as the CEO and Creative Director of the futurePerfect lab, a boutique
creative agency that works with non-profits, cultural and educational institutions
to develop imaginative and playful applications of integrated media and emerging
technology. She was formerly the Multi-Media Director at Breakthrough, a global
human rights organization, where she designed, developed and virally propagated a
wide range of new media and pop culture campaigns that helped raise awareness and
instigate policy change on pressing social issues. She created the first 3D social
change game, ICED I Can End Deportation, to shift the frame around unfair U.S.
immigration policies. ICED was downloaded by over 250,000 players in 166 countries,
and earned tremendous media attention (23 newspapers, 134 blogs, 295 radio
broadcasts, 68 television broadcasts, and 76 internet news & search engines). She
also designed America 2049, a groundbreaking alternative reality game on Facebook
about pluralism, featuring Harold Perrineau (LOST), Victor Garber (ALIAS), Cherry
Jones (24), Anthony Rapp (RENT) and the comedian Margaret Cho has been featured in
Kotaku, TIME, Wired, Salon, Fast Company, Washington Post, and Huffington Post, to
name a few, and nominated for a Games for Change Award and Katerva Award. Prior to
joining Breakthrough, Heidi taught Digital Media & Media Studies at Hunter College,
and launched a free digital media program for low-income youth through Time Warner &
NOAA funding. Most recently, Heidi co-founded XTH, an open source biophysical
wearable sensor start up. She is also completing a PhD in the Electronic Arts
program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and was named a Harvestworks Creativity
+ Technology = Enterprise Fellow with support by the Rockefeller Foundation. She has
been an artist-in-residence at Banff New Media Institute, the Waag Society and the
Vermont Studio Center, and served as a new media mentor for both the National Latino
Producer’s Academy and BAVC Producer’s Institute.
