About John

Hi! I’m John, a Filipino-American Game Designer, Marketer, and Educator living in the Seattle area. For the first decade of my career I served in the U.S. Coast Guard, where I gained extensive leadership and management experience while conducting ice breaking, law enforcement, and scientific research operations around the country and across the globe. After that I founded two tech start-ups before earning my MBA and PhD. Since then my full time job has been as a university professor, teaching in the areas of marketing, entrepreneurship, and social innovation.

In addition, I have spent decades playing video and tabletop roleplaying games. I’ve led guilds of hundreds of players, managed and moderated gaming sites with thousands of concurrent users, participated in and ran international e-sports competitions, and written extensively about and for games.

For the past decade I have focused primarily on tabletop roleplaying games, acting as gamemaster for hundreds of game sessions at venues and conventions across the country, as well as producing hundreds of episodes for two gaming related podcasts: An an actual play with several different science fantasy systems called Intrepid Heroes, and a gaming and game design talk show with two full time designers called Digital Divination. To date I have nearly three dozen published and forthcoming credits for D20 fantasy and science fiction games, including winning a Gold Ennie for Best Setting.

EDUCATION

B.S. Management & Economics, U.S. Coast Guard Academy
MBA, University of Houston – Clear Lake
M.S. Psychology, University of Michigan
Ph.D. Marketing, University of Michigan

I am a consumer psychologist with a focus on decision making and persuasion in interactive digital media. My research is predominantly in digital marketing methods, especially in the areas of customization and personalization.