Jill Vialet is a seasoned social entrepreneur, author, senior advisor, and public speaker with a longstanding commitment to fostering social impact through creativity, education, and play. She is the founder of Playworks, a national nonprofit that harnesses the power of play to bring out the best in every student, and co-founder of Oakland’s Museum of Children’s Art (MOCHA). In 2016, Jill was a Fellow at Stanford University’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school), where she co-founded Substantial Classrooms, an organization dedicated to redesigning how schools recruit, train, and support substitute teachers.

Jill is the author of the middle grade novel Recess Rules and co-author of two nonfiction books: Why Play Works: Big Ideas Start Small and Substantial Classrooms: Redesigning the Substitute Teaching Experience (with co-founder Amanda von Moos). A frequent speaker, she has given talks at TEDMED, TEDx San Francisco, and TEDx ABQ.

Jill has taught as a Lecturer at Stanford’s d. school and served as a Lecturer and Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. She currently consults for a range of social impact organizations and serves in interim leadership roles, most recently as Interim Executive Director of the UC Berkeley Haas Center for Social Sector Leadership (CSSL). Jill holds an undergraduate degree from Harvard University.

LinkedIn: Jill Vialet