Kelsey Lewin Named VGHF’s Co-Director

Our most prominent volunteer is now our first hire!

I’m very pleased to announce to the world that my friend and frequent collaborator Kelsey Lewin has agreed to formally join the Foundation as its brand new co-director!

In addition to being an incredible historian, Kelsey has been our most prominent volunteer pretty much since day one, in mostly invisible ways. Among other things, she’s acted as our unofficial (and later, official!) head of marketing and PR, she was instrumental in our joint educational grant with the University of Washington, she’s spoken on our behalf at events and conferences, and she recently spent five weeks embedded with me and a small army of volunteers in Minneapolis, helping to archive Game Informer Magazine’s press materials.

If you’ve ever enjoyed one of our pop-up museum exhibits at Portland Retro Gaming Expo, you should thank Kelsey for making that happen. Here’s her video highlighting the 2018 exhibit that she helped us curate:

Kelsey’s retrospective of our 2018 “Staying With Power” pop-up museum, which she helped curate.

The move to bring Kelsey on board was met with unanimous board approval and, in retrospect, feels inevitable. She’s more than proven her dedication to the work we’re doing, and has made it clear to me time and again that this is the kind of work she wants to be doing.

The co-director position is still a voluntary one, as the Foundation has no salaried employees (yes, that includes me!), so for the immediate future she’ll be working for us part-time as she continues to manage Pink Gorilla Games, the Seattle-based retro video game chain that she co-owns with her partner, Cody Spencer.