All times listed in Eastern
Set those alarms and grab your favorite snacks — it’s gonna be a day full of inspiration, creativity, and puzzly magic!
🕛 12:00 PM – “Speed Puzzling: A Different Way to Piece Together Fun” with Tammy McLeod
🕧 12:30 PM – "Puzzles as Tools of Resistance & Resilience" with Christine Murphy and Pat Roos
🕐 1:00 PM – “Building a Puzzle Brand” with Good Fortune, Oakland Puzzles, and Puzzles of Color
🕑 2:00 PM – "Picture-Perfect Puzzling" with Nick & Shelly Puzzles
🕒 3:00 PM – “Little Hands, Mighty Stories" with Cocoa Puzzles
🕞 3:30 PM – “Puzzling by Touch” with The Puzzled Co.
🕓 4:00 PM – “Tricky Pieces & Serious Play” with Stumpcraft and KK Puzzles
Jess and Ray are the founders of Good Fortune Puzzle Co. On their journey of reconnecting with play and culture, they noticed as much as they enjoyed puzzling, the brands and images weren't something they felt a deep connection to. With the belief that Asian creativity is worth celebrating, puzzling is underrated and that puzzles can reflect a broader range of experiences, Good Fortune Puzzle Co was born.
Their puzzles are made with premium, sustainable materials and manufactured locally in Canada. Good Fortune Puzzle Co also shares 5% of its revenue with their artists.
Founder, Chief Experience Officer and Puzzle Craftsman at StumpCraft.
I see puzzles as my artful way of trojan horsing attention curation and embodied particip-action, to unlock whole brain processing and solutionary thinking.
“When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong”
―R. Buckminster Fuller
Tammy is an avid jigsaw puzzler who holds 2 Guinness World Records. She is one of the founders of the USA Jigsaw Puzzle Association and has competed at the World Jigsaw Puzzle Championship numerous times. She loves all things puzzles, and shares her puzzling adventures on YouTube through Two Puzzle Unicorns, and Instagram as @TammyMcLeodPuzzler
Christine Murphy is a writer, advocate, and puzzle-lover. She has lived, worked, and traveled in more than a hundred countries, including living for eleven months in a tent across the African continent, and a year as a resident in a buddhist nunnery in the Himalayas. A trained Buddhologist, Murphy has a Ph.D. in Religious Studies. NOTES ON SURVIVING THE FIRE, published by Knopf/Penguin Random House, is available wherever books are sold.
I began illustrating art for children's puzzles in 2019 and launched Cocoa Puzzles in the summer of 2020. My goal was to create imaginative characters through art that children could identify with and relate to in their everyday lives. By combining my art with puzzles, I aimed to help parents bond with their children and spend meaningful time together, just as I did in my own home.
William Jones cofounded Puzzles of Color with his sister Ericka Chambers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Together with their family, they built their small business from their garage to now managing a warehouse of 10,000 puzzles and are on the shelves of Barnes & Noble and other retailers across the US. Puzzles of Color aims to feature the work of artists of color and amplify culture in jigsaw puzzles.
I'm a native Californian with a history in entrepreneurship, activism, social work, manufacturing, customer service, and inventory management. Along with my sister DeAnna, I am co-owner of Oakland Puzzle Company in Oakland, CA, which gives me a chance to put much of my past experience to use. OPC makes high-quality puzzles that support local artists and local organizations that are making our community a better place.
Nick and Shelly are a husband/wife puzzle making team who specialize in wood grain and marquetry puzzles. They live in Central Louisiana with their 3 cats and 3 dogs, and love all methods of making -- from gardening to woodworking, to ceramics to costume making!
With nearly 2 decades of experience with Hollywood productions, filming weddings, and product photography, Nick loves sharing his knowledge with anyone who will listen. Shelly had no interest in photography until she met Nick, and reigns him n when he starts nerding out too hard about cameras.
My puzzles are cut on wood using vintage art and designs, predominantly from original book pages. They feature my favorite things about puzzles: color line cutting, shaped puzzles, intricate pieces, and sometimes monochrome images.
Retired psychologist, frequent puzzler, except for when she doesn't do any puzzles at all.
Deeply interested in people, increasing her kindness, and how humans can be more connected to each other, and right now, how we all survive this crap!
Gabriel is the cofounder of The Puzzled Co. along with her father Philip Einsohn. Together they create waterjet-cut art & education puzzles – waterproof, wood, magnetic – that are cut and printed in-house in their Dallas-based waterjet design studio. Gabriel introduced a new partnership with the American Printing House for the Blind (APH.org) to expand The Puzzled Co.’s patent-pending tactile Puzzles for EveryBody collection and launched a collection of Memory Puzzles with tactile and Braille printing.
Joyce is a lifelong puzzle lover who lives in Las Vegas with her jignificant other. She sometimes competes in speed puzzling contests but mostly loves the meditative effect of a relaxing puzzling session. She co-created Puzzworthy, a puzzle merch shop, with her friend and fellow puzzler Jessa. Joyce works as a content creator, career coach and voice actor and also enjoys movies, hiking, paddleboarding, crafting, board games and party games.
Chat Ninja
Debbie somehow manages to always have a wooden puzzle in progress -- in addition to her day job as a business analyst, parenting three school-age children, and enjoying the ups and downs of daily life with her sometimes-puzzler husband.
She loves connecting people with "aha" information they never even knew they needed, so she is delighted to assist with Puzzle Jam chats!
Arrr, Matey! We've dug out this ol' treasure map of our Puzzle Makers, and have hidden secret code within. We will unroll our map the week of Puzzle Jam Global, so check back here to visit Puzzle Island and take a puzzle vacation, and follow the map to the end for a chance to enter into the Founders' Booty Giveaway!
Click on the Map to Sail to the Island!
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Or in short...
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