I’m quite excited to announce that Take This has added three new members to our board of directors, bringing our board to a robust nine members. Tanya DePass (CypherofTyr on Twitch, founder of I Need Diverse Games) and Chandana “Eka” Ekanayake (Co-founder and Studio Director of Outerloop Games) represent a targeted effort to increase the diversity of our board as well as to include members of the creative side of the game industry. We are also pleased to recognize psychologist Mark Kline, who joined the board in 2020. Dr. Mark, after whom our award for mental health representation in games is named, was the founding clinical director of Take This. You can find more information about these illustrious individuals on our website. There you’ll also find the rest of our staff and board.

The Take This board is led by Christian Svensson. Kate Edwards serves as secretary and Kelsey Wesley is our treasurer.

Take This continues to work to address our commitment, made in July 2020 and updated in August 2020, to address diversity and representation in the organization, and to remain accountable for those goals. Todays’ announcement represents one of our most significant steps to date in that direction. While we have also increased the number of Black participants in panels and events which we participate in and run, our network of regular contributors remains largely white. Over the last six months, we have met a goal of achieving 40% visible representation on our panels, and in the next sixth months we are planning a series of panels on mental health featuring all-Black, all-POC, and all-queer panels and moderators to discuss the unique needs and experiences of marginalized communities. We are also identifying expert contributors to write articles on these topics for TakeThis.org, with compensation – another of the commitments we made last year.

We recognize that we must increase the number of Black developers, creators, clinicians, and content contributors we know and work with in order to ensure that we can invite these people to the table for conversation.