2025 Speakers
Tad Leckman, Lecturer, University of California Santa Cruz
Tad Leckman has an extensive background in creative leadership for learning and development for artists, designers, writers, and engineers in entertainment. Most recently, he has designed and led Activision Blizzard's award-winning Level Up U program, whose mission is “To create opportunities for individuals from diverse backgrounds to enter the game industry.” He was also responsible for the “craft” learning and development of video game developers across all Activision and Blizzard studios. Craft learning includes hard skills and software training, as well as foundation and theory, for a broad spectrum of engineering, art, and game design disciplines. Previously, Tad has also held training and learning/development roles at Riot Games, Lucasfilm, and ILM. Tad has taught several undergraduate game design courses for UC Santa Cruz under the Computational Media Department and the Games and Playable Media program. He has also taught at the graduate level for the Digital Arts and New Media MFA program.