Louis Lafair
Writer & Board Game Inventor
Louis has published two award-winning board games, served as a National Student Poet, worked as a Product Manager, and spoken at a TEDx event.
Writer
Louis writes children’s books.
Appointed by Michelle Obama, he served as a 2013-2014 National Student Poet, one of five selected from over 10,000 submissions, “the nation’s highest honor for youth poets presenting original work.” A year-long literary ambassador, he travelled the country, leading workshops at schools and teacher conferences about poetry in the 21st century. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic and poets.org.
He has also produced podcasts for State of the Human, by the Stanford Storytelling Project, with 17,000 subscribers.
National Student Poet appointment ceremony
Board Game Inventor
Early prototype
First copy
When he was 22 years old, Louis and his siblings invented Mapmaker: The Gerrymandering Game.
The Lafair siblings grew up in a gerrymandered district in Austin, TX. They wanted to spread the word about gerrymandering in a fun, hands-on way. Mapmaker funded in its first 6 hours on Kickstarter thanks to 1,468 backers, including Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Mapmaker has been featured in The Washington Post, NBC, NPR, Ars Technica, and other national news.
The game received a 2019 Dice Tower Seal of Approval, a Best of Austin Award, and other awards.
Photo by Evelyn Hockstein from The Washington Post. Delivering 82 copies of Mapmaker to the Supreme Court with “Gerrymandering Is Not a Game” proclamations
–Arnold Schwarzenegger, The Terminator
–Leonard Ornstein, AP Government Teacher
–Aaron Schimmoller, Settlers of Catan Addict
Product Manager
Louis worked as a Group Product Manager at Asana, where he led a team of PMs, empowering customers to set up, run, and scale mission critical workflows.
He previously worked at wikiHow and Genius.
He has also developed an AI that can beat him at Pathwayz, his own board game.
Brainstorming for a feature at Asana
Playing against PAI, the AI he developed to beat him at his own game
Public Speaker
He won the Lunsford Award for best-in-class presentation at Stanford, one of six students selected from 1,700.
He speaks on a range of topics including: writing, board game design, and his research on time use at the Oxford University Centre for Time Use Research.
