Jonathan Ackley

Jonathan Ackley is a Director at Walt Disney Imagineering Research and Development. At Imagineering R&D, Jonathan works in the New Media group, identifying emerging content platforms and visualizing the opportunites they represent to the Walt Disney Company.

His latest project at R&D enabled guests at Epcot World Showcase to use wireless technology to control the theme park environment in a live park adventure game. Guests solved puzzles to thwart the plans of cartoony super-villains. Fortunately, the world was saved.

At R&D, Jonathan also led the technology team for ABC's pioneering Enhanced TV group. More recent R&D projects for Jonathan have included development of the Disney cell-phone service, forays into next-generation gaming, and new genres for wireless and broadband content.

He is a longtime designer and producer of interactive fiction, including the 1997 Adventure Game of the Year, "The Curse of Monkey Island." At LucasArts Entertainment Company, he worked on a series of acclaimed story games. He also worked at Rocket Science Games Inc., a company billed as the convergence of Hollywood and Silicon Valley. Before coming to Imagineering R&D, Jonathan and wife Casey helmed their own design consulting firm, Stargazy Studios. Jonathan also worked for LEGO Mindstorms and Industrial Light and Magic.

Jonathan holds a degree in Film Production from the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Casey Ackley

As a freelance designer for the game and toy industries, Casey Ackley enjoys creating out-of-the-box entertainment products that teach kids in unconventional ways. She got her feet wet fifteen years ago at LucasArts Learning, working on breakthrough school-based projects like National Audubon Society’s Paul Parkranger and the Mystery of the Disappearing Ducks and the Richmond School District’s Night of the Living Statues. From there, she went on to manage the production of many LucasArts games like Star Wars: Rebel Assault, Full Throttle, and Mortimer and the Riddles of the Medallion. She then designed and led the production of the award-winning children’s game Star Wars: Yoda’s Challenge.

Casey and her husband Jonathan founded their own game and toy design house, Stargazy Studios, Inc. At Stargazy, Casey created blue-sky toy designs for LEGO and content design for Fisher-Price’s award-winning learning toy, Kasey the Kinderbot. She also designed games for major publishers like Disney Interactive.

Casey holds a Bachelor of Arts in Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley. She currently lives in Glendale with her husband and two young daughters, her most recent and rewarding projects to date.