Anahita Dalmia is co-founder and CEO of the company Alterea (yes it’s a play on “alternate reality"). Alterea creates interactive stories across mediums (theatre, games, VR, etc), allowing participants to enter a different world in which they have agency and impact within an unfolding story with the goal to show them that their actions matter and empowering them to build the world they want to see.
Her projects have won the Aspen Institute of Information Disorder Competition, SBIR grants from the US Dept of Education and been a finalist for the 2020 SXSW Innovation Awards. She is a three-time published author on achieving social impact using experiential design, including the articles "Disney: Castles, Kingdoms and (No) Common Man" in JTEAS and "Designing An Adventure” in the Carnegie Mellon University’s Well Played Journal and has been featured in multiple publications including Authority Magazine and ThriveGlobal’s “Dreamers” and “Future of Games” series. She is also an associate faculty member at the Media Education Lab and on the Board of Advisors for The Game Academy and UC Riverside’s Design Thinking Program.
2 topics · no fee, no honorarium, no mileage
Review available topics below. Use the “Request This Free Speech” button and fill out the contact form. Anahita contacts you to discuss the details of the request.
Anything you want to achieve, any door you want to open—someone out there already holds the key. The real challenge is finding them, reaching them, and persuading them to unlock it. In today’s digital world, even the busiest leaders and gatekeepers still check their inboxes. With persistence, clarity, and the right technique, cold outreach can turn what feels impossible into a tangible opportunity.
I’ve seen this play out firsthand. What is typically a three-month government approval process on SAM.gov, I cut down to just four days by directly emailing every official in the agency until the right person responded. When we needed educators to pilot our program, 500 teachers signed up in a single day—not because of ad spend, but because of carefully crafted outreach that landed in the right inboxes.
This session will blend mindset with mechanics. We’ll explore why believing that “anyone can be reached” transforms how leaders pursue opportunities, and we’ll get practical: which tools can surface the right contacts, how to design messages that cut through noise, and how to approach outreach as both an art and a science.
Attendees will leave with more than inspiration. They will gain a concrete playbook for identifying the people who hold the keys to their goals, crafting the messages that earn a response, and building the persistence to keep knocking until the door opens.
In today’s digital landscape, truth has become harder than ever to pin down. Artificial intelligence generates flawless fakes, while social media echo chambers amplify only what we already believe. The result is a world where misinformation spreads faster than fact, and trust feels increasingly fragile. This session explores how gaming can be more than play—it can be a powerful tool for navigating this reality.
Through the lens of Agents of Influence, a spy-themed educational game, we will look at how interactive storytelling and game mechanics can break through cognitive blind spots, disrupt the echo chamber effect, and train players to think critically about the information they consume.
Audience members will leave with practical insights into how the design principles behind gaming can be applied to education, communication, and leadership. They will discover strategies for helping digital natives—and themselves—recognize manipulation, question assumptions, and make more informed choices in an era shaped by AI and algorithmic feeds. Above all, participants will come away with a renewed sense of possibility: that the very technologies fueling misinformation can also be reimagined as tools for truth, resilience, and agency.
Free Speakers Los Angeles & Orange County is a pro bono speakers bureau. Since 2020, our speakers have given free presentations to Rotary clubs, libraries, schools, and community groups across the Los Angeles & Orange County area. Browse the full list to book a free guest speaker in Los Angeles & Orange County, or learn more about how it works.
