Dan Ryder is a veteran classroom educator and Director of Design & Innovation at Community Regional Charter School, a free, public pre-K-12 school in rural central Maine. He formerly served as Co-Founder and Education Director of the SUCCESS & INNOVATION CENTER at MT BLUE CAMPUS, an empathy-fueled makerspace + mentoring space for all students and faculty. In addition to his daily classroom practice, he serves as a design, development and delivery consultant for the US Department of State's Office of English Language Programs, writing PANELS & PERSPECTIVES: Creating Comics in the EFL Classroom and developing Critical Creativity in Action, a 40-card deck of learning activities using creative expression with editor, Jacquie Gardy. He also co-authored INTENTION: Critical Creativity in the Classroom with his good friend, Amy Burvall, and performs improv comedy with his team, Teachers Lounge Mafia. Dan received the 2019 Horace Mann NEA Foundation Award for Teaching Excellence and was invited to share his vision for empathy-driven education at TEDxDirigo. He serves on the Advisory Board for SXSW EDU and shares his work with schools, organizations and conferences around the world.