Ashley Nicolette, STEM Specialist at Albany Park YOUmedia, was invited to Washington, D.C. this week as part of an Electronic Software Association (ESA) Loft Innovation Fellowship in recognition of her videogame Phantom Limb, which she's in the process of designing and hopes to complete in a few months. The game is a narrative, visual novel that explores the consequences of sexual assault from both male and female perspectives. Her hope is that it will give survivors hope.
Even though it isn't complete, Ashley was fortunate to share some of the vignettes of her game with policy makers from CyberSecurity and the Office of Science and Technology, highlighting victim blaming and rape culture. While in D.C. she even briefly met Joe Biden during a visit to the White House.
Ashley's background includes game design, and she has been working for the past year facilitating fun and exciting STEM-based teen programs, such as etching designs onto dog tags (electrolysis involving the study of metal reactions), making lava lamps and studying volume and physics during water balloon fights. Her next big plan is to work with teens to create a floor piano at the library!
