NASAGA Member of the Month: Antonio Ruiz Ezquerro

Every month, we highlight one NASAGA member and the great things they’re doing. This month’s Member of the Month is Antonio Ruiz Ezquerro, PhD, Assistant Director of the Office of Student Involvement, Colgate University.

What kind of work do you do?

My full-time job is at Colgate. I advise student organizations, and I help with university events like the Springfest weekend. I meet a lot with new student organizations: I advise on what events would work for them and make sure they're in compliance with university rules. Also, I assist them in my areas of expertise. For instance, the Board Game Club came to me and said, “Hey, we want to buy some new games, and we're thinking about Catan.” I replied, You could do so much better; let’s have a conversation. I also work on orientation: I train the orientation student staff and provide leadership workshops to other students. I wear many different hats.

Additionally, I teach leadership courses at Florida State University, and it’s something I really enjoy. I've been teaching leadership for six years, with a wide range of courses like Leadership Theory and Leadership in Cinema. My area of expertise and my research are in leadership studies, but I've taken the angle of using role-playing games for leadership education. I tend to merge those two things not only in my research but also in my teaching. Specifically, I incorporate a lot of role-playing game elements in my teaching to create experiential learning situations for students. 

Finally, I’m the Head of Game Design for Lead + RPG. I design games with them and also help with the research components. It's a small team of us. We develop research on the use of role-playing games for leadership development. We run various leadership development services, including retreats, consulting, and professional development workshops, using role-playing games we've created. For instance, we were at GAMA a few months ago, where people playtested one of my card games with some role-playing elements meant to teach negotiation principles, which was a fantastic experience. Additionally, we ran three more workshops there focused on different leadership topics. So it’s a hobby/third job.

Why are you a NASAGA member?

One of the neat things about NASAGA is that it’s a tight-knit group. There are people there who share a similar interest and love for games, but not just for entertainment. NASAGAns try to figure out how we can use games beyond entertainment, whether it’s for professional development or education. Do I make games for leisure purposes? Sure, but the majority of my games are for educational purposes, and that’s a natural fit for NASAGA’s audience and focus. NASAGA 2024 was a great place to get feedback and playtest some projects, I ended up really liking it. Joe Lasley was the one who invited me there, and he, Samantha Funk, and I presented a project called Kingdoms of Equitopia.

What’s your favorite NASAGA memory? 

That’s tough because I’ve only been to one NASAGA conference so far! But I really enjoyed attending the workshop with a game about the Black Death. It was really neat. I tried to put myself in the shoes of a student and think about how the game could help them understand the gravity of the situation and the drastic impact it had on people’s lives. Discussing historical tragedies can create a bit of emotional distance from the real-life tragedies being described. It can start to feel like a story rather than something people actually lived through. But that game really grounded things by placing the players in the shoes of the characters, with challenges like “Mom just died, who is going to feed us now? Dad died two weeks ago.” It offered a powerful perspective, and the group I was with made it an even more meaningful experience overall.

NASAGA’s theme for the 2025 Conference is paahpioni iiši-neepwaantiinki, “A Path to Playful Learning.” What does “Playful Learning” look like in your space?

In the classic corporate America framing, games are seen as almost something bad. “Game” is a naughty word. When you say that you want to bring games or play into a situation, it immediately becomes “play = fun = not work.” It goes against the objectives of production and profit. But what I’ve learned with our research in Lead + RPG is that play is a great conductor to learning, but first, we need to grant ourselves permission to play. One has to purposely allow oneself to get immersed in the experience.

So, to me, playful learning is about giving yourself permission to engage with curiosity and imagination—even in everyday moments. When we approach learning as something we can actively experience rather than just consume, it opens the door to deeper understanding. Whether it's through a game, a role-play, or a creative twist in a lecture, play transforms learning into something more memorable, meaningful, and human.

Anything else?

I’m really looking forward to NASAGA 2026 in Rochester! It will be nice to have something much closer. I would even like to be involved with the planning of that one because it would only be a couple of hours away from home.