Hi Josh! Thank you for taking time to share what you do in our industry. I'll never forget visiting Creativity Inc. and seeing a stunning 2 or 3 story wall of toys and games as I walked in. What a history of products your company has worked on! Tell us about your role in the toy industry.

I’m the (newly appointed!) CEO of Creativity, Inc.

We help toy companies around the world make magical, innovative products. Our work spans play design and documentation, audio and art, engineering, project management, manufacturing support—the list goes on. Over the last 28 years, we’ve contributed to over 7,000 products, including more than 40 TOTY award winners.

In parallel, I’m also Chief Creative Officer of Readyland, a partnership with Dave Capper, the iconic inventor behind Hit Clips, Video Now, Tooth Tunes, and more. Readyland creates printed books that kids can actually talk with using Alexa. They can play games, talk to characters, make choices, and have a different adventure every time they return—all without needing a screen.

Why and how did you get into the Toy and Game industry?

It was a complete fluke. I had an earlier career as a professional French horn player. I earned a doctorate from Juilliard and performed and taught internationally. But around age 30, I started looking for something new—and decided to go back to a childhood passion for programming.

On a very early job site, I found a listing for a programmer at a company called Creativity. As I read it, and saw that it was for toys, something clicked inside me, and I got extremely excited. The last line read, “Master horn player a plus,” and it felt like a cosmic sign. I started as an entry-level programmer, and 25 years later, I’m the CEO. It’s been an incredible journey and I’m so grateful for the opportunity.

Huge credit goes to Charlie and Sally Albert, Creativity’s founders, who took a chance on me and created a company deeply committed to quality, creativity, and bringing joy to kids around the world. And as it turns out, they mentioned the horn in the job description because several staff were musicians—but no horn players!

What is your favorite project to date?

I’ve been fortunate to work on so many amazing projects with so many stellar teams, it’s impossible to name a favorite, especially with so many under NDA! But one of my absolute favorites is Readyland. The amount of play and interaction we get into each book is like nothing I’ve ever done before. We’ve just released a new title in partnership with Insight Editions, a leading publisher of exceptionally high-quality books. Our new “Ready Activated” Discover Dinosaurs book has over 3.5 hours of interactive audio, and hundreds and hundreds of interactions: games, news stories, even conversations with real-life paleontologists.

It’s truly a new medium. One of the experts we’re working with was almost in tears seeing it for the first time, because she was imagining what it would have meant to her as a child. I truly believe we’ll be inspiring a whole new generation of scientists.

What is it about the Toy and Game Industry that you love?

I just love that the ultimate goal of our work is to bring joy to kids. What could be better than that? And maybe because of that, the people in the industry are almost without exception really good people. I’ve had the great fortune to collaborate with hundreds of toy professionals across so many companies and brands, and it’s always a pleasure.

What advice would you give a young adult graduating from high school or college today?

Learn AI. Not just how to use it—learn it as a tool. Understand its strengths, limits, and ethical implications. It’s like learning to use a table saw: you don’t use it for everything, but for the right job it’s incredibly powerful—and you’d better know how to use it safely.

What is the most rewarding part of your job?

It’s knowing that our work has made a real difference for so many people. Like reading a parent’s comment that Readyland helped their child love reading for the first time. Or hearing from a woman with cerebral palsy who said a dance game we worked on helped her enjoy using her feet. And now, meeting young adults who light up remembering the toys we helped create—that’s magic.