Chris Swain teaches Third Space Thinking at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. He was a founding member of the strategic design agency R/GA Interactive (www.rga.com). At R/GA he led large stakeholder-oriented initiatives for Microsoft, Intel, IBM, Disney, NASDAQ, Sony, AT&T, and many others. He helped grow the company from 4 people and $0 in revenue to over 200 people and $50mm in revenue. R/GA is now a leading global design strategy firm.

As a USC professor he founded the Electronic Arts Game Innovation Lab and the USC Games Institute. His thesis students have gone on to win multiple Game of the Year Awards in the game industry. He led research initiatives in collaboration with Gates Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, National Science Foundation, Brown University, LA Times, ABC News, U.S. State Dept., U.S. Dept. of Defense, U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, and many others. He speaks about design around the world including at MIT, Harvard, Columbia, Cambridge, Carnegie Mellon, City U of Hong Kong, the Sorbonne, and many conferences.

He is a graduate of the Indiana University Bloomington.