Lee Schuneman, Efekta

Describe yourself in three words or phrases.

Disruptive, ambitious, and empathetic.

I care a lot about people, I care about my team, and I care about what we’re doing. For me, that was big appeal when I went from gaming into education – because I could do something meaningful.

What do you like most about your job?

We’ve got to innovate, we’ve got to do things that are new. So then, let’s try and empathetically disrupt. Let’s take teaching as an example. [With the Efekta platform] the goal isn’t to replace you – it’s to show that the right implementation of technology will mean a better life for the human in the classroom.

What’s a piece of work you’re proud of – and what did it teach you?

There have been multiple teaching moments over the years. The second game I worked on, Diddy Kong Racing, came out on the Nintendo 64 way back in 1997. But the magic of it was, I got to work with [legendary Japanese game designer] Shigeru Miyamoto. And through that, I got to learn about playfulness. And that’s really what Nintendo is about, making playful experiences, and then applying that to everything else.

I’ve applied that to everything that I’ve done ever since then – and especially now in education. Education can’t just be playful. It has to lead to a learning outcome.

When I joined [Efekta sister company] EF eight years ago, I came in as the tech guy thinking, I know what I’m talking about. But I had a very sharp learning curve. Now I’m learning from the academic team, and spending all the time with the teachers and in our schools, and I’m connecting those two things together

What’s a small daily habit that helps you in your work?

Incessant reading. I have about 50 different Substacks that I follow on AI, politics, music – everything. How am I supposed to do my job if I don’t understand the world?

What’s one change you’d like to see in your sector over the next few years?

There’s a lot of noise about how AI is disrupting us. Well, that’s only because we let it. Don’t let it disrupt us – take control of it, and build what you think is the right thing for education.

Just because an LLM company says, ‘this is how you should use AI’ doesn’t mean that’s how you should use it.

What’s one piece of advice you’d give to someone starting out in this field?

You need to go and understand the impact that you have on the student. And really understand that student’s journey. What do they actually care about? It’s not about what you, as an educator, think that they care about. It actually tends to be pretty simple.

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