DeStefano is a professor emeritus of language, literature and culture at The Ohio State University. She was on the faculty of the College of Education and Human Ecology for 30 years and served as an associate dean of the college from 1993 to 1998, primarily for research and development. Her research and scholarly writing focused on language and literacy teaching and learning in school and adult learning settings. She has authored and coauthored several books and many articles during her academic career.

DeStefano graduated with her bachelor’s degree in 1961, also being inducted into Phi Beta Kappa that year. She earned her master’s degree in 1963, and her PhD in linguistics and language education in 1970, all from Stanford University. She came directly from Stanford to Ohio State and remained there for her entire career.

Currently, DeStefano is the managing director of Baltimore Wireless, a company that holds an FCC license for the E group of 2.5 gHz channels in Baltimore, which are currently being used in 3G and 4G cell phones. This company was founded by her late husband, Ralph V. DeStefano, who was a media entrepreneur. She is also a member of the Opera Columbus Board of Directors, recently appointed to the Board of Directors of the Columbus Symphony Orchestra and is a member of the Red Cross International’s Tiffany Circle. Additionally, she is a member of the Board of Visitors of the School of Communications and Theatre, Temple University, her late husband Ralph’s alma mater. 

DeStefano became interested in Dr. Clay Marsh’s work due to her own pulmonary condition of asthma and several bouts of pneumonia. This interest was underscored by a family history of pulmonary disease, with her mother dying of pulmonary fibrosis, and her maternal grandfather of silicosis, as well as other relatives in Finland of tuberculosis during the Winter War with the USSR. DeStefano, living with these conditions and several others over a period of time, has become aware of the interconnectedness of physical systems and their uniqueness from person to person. This is the foundation of her interest in personalized health care and the Center for Personalized Health Care directed by Dr. Marsh.

Jane McGonigal is a visionary game designer and futurist, and she is harnessing the power of the Internet games in new ways to help solve some of the biggest challenges facing our world today and tomorrow.

Imagine a world where every challenge is a quest — where the harder a task is, the more people want to do it. Where people take pleasure in failing and come back invigorated every time they fall. Where they communicate spontaneously with their collaborators to pool their knowledge towards shared solutions. It turns out that world already exists. And if you draw on its secrets, you can transform your business: that creative collaboration, that effortless grasp of new technology, that very 21st-century connectivity and that power to solve complex problems can all be yours. Your guide to that world is Jane McGonigal. And that world? It’s the world of...gamers. Gamers? In her engaging, forward-thinking book Reality is Broken, Jane McGonigal makes the case that the gamer spirit — an attitude of fun, dedicated, collective problem-solving — is our greatest asset as we face the social, economic, and environmental problems of the 21st century.

She argues that game designers are effectively happiness engineers, experts in making difficult tasks engaging, and that we should draw on their smarts as we frame the challenges of our time. Jane herself is a specialist in this field, a designer of alternate reality games, where a real-life activity is re-framed as a game. The activity could be as mundane as household chores or as epic as surviving peak oil or establishing local sustainable businesses, the subjects of two of Jane’s own games: whatever the challenge, we can face it more boldly if we bring to it a gameful state of mind. But as Jane explains, in her quirky, spirited way, all of this is more than just a question of re-framing. It’s about bringing back to contemporary life the kind of heroism, epic purpose, and communal striving that so many of us struggle to find in our lives. With Jane’s help, you can understand how to channel that drive to revitalize your company — and fill our world with epic wins.

Credentials and Honors

• Creative Director, Social Chocolate
• Director of Game Research and Development, Institute for the Future, a non-profit futures research group based in Palo Alto, California
• The New York Times best selling author
• PhD, game research, the University of California at Berkeley
• Named by Oprah Winfrey as one of the twenty most inspiring women in the world, O Magazine, 2010.
• Honored by Game Developer Magazine as one of the 50 people making the biggest impact in games
• Featured by The New York Times featured her as one of 10 scientists with a the best vision for what’s coming next in 2011
• Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in Business, 2009

He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences. He served as Dean of Graduate Studies from 1991-3 and as President of the Society for Neuroscience in 1997-98. As a neuroscientist and neuroendocrinologist, McEwen studies environmentally-regulated, variable gene expression in brain mediated by circulating steroid hormones and endogenous neurotransmitters in relation to brain sexual differentiation and the actions of sex, stress and thyroid hormones on the adult brain. His laboratory discovered adrenal steroid receptors in the hippocampus in 1968. His laboratory combines molecular, anatomical, pharmacological, physiological and behavioral methodologies and relates their findings to human clinical information. His current research focuses on stress effects on amygdala and prefrontal cortex as well as hippocampus, and his laboratory also investigates sex hormone effects and sex differences in these brain regions. In addition, he served on the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Socioeconomic Status and Health, in which he helped to reformulate concepts and measurements related to stress and stress hormones in the context of human societies. This led to the concept of “allostatic load” that describes the wear and tear on the body and brain from chronic stress and related life style behaviors that lead to dysregulation of phyiological stress pathways that are normally protective. He is also a member of the National Council on the Developing Child which focuses on healthy brain development as a key to physical and mental health. He is the co-author of book with science writer Elizabeth Lasley for a lay audience called “The End of Stress as We Know It” published in 2002 by the Joseph Henry Press and the Dana Press and another book with science writer Harold M. Schmeck, Jr. called “The Hostage Brain” published in 1994 by The Rockefeller University Press.

Stress- and Allostasis-Induced Brain Plasticity by Bruce S. McEwen and Peter J. Gianaros

Protective and Damaging Effects of Stress Mediators by Bruce S. McEwen, Ph.D.