Jill Vialet

Jill Vialet is an accomplished social entrepreneur, author and public speaker. She is the co-founder of Oakland’s Museum of Children’s Art (www.mocha.org) and the founder of Playworks (www.playworks.org), a national nonprofit committed to bringing out the best in students by leveraging the power of play. In 2006, Jill was a Fellow at Stanford’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (better known as the dschool), and as a result co-founded Substantial (www.substantialclassrooms.org) to redesign the way that schools and districts recruit, train and support substitute teaching. She is the author of the middle grade novel, Recess Rules, and co-author of the nonfiction book Substantial Classrooms: Redesigning the Substitute Teaching Experience, which she wrote with co-founder Amanda von Moos. Jill's third book, Why Play Works: Big Ideas Start Small, will be published in September, 2021. Jill is a frequent public speaker, have given talks at TEDMED, TEDxSanFrancisco, and TEDxABQ.