Clark Aldrich
Clark Aldrich is an American author and the founder of multiple companies in the interactive learning and serious gaming industry.
Early life
Aldrich grew up in Concord, Massachusetts, where he attended The Fenn School. He then attended the Lawrence Academy at Groton. He earned a bachelor's degree in cognitive science at Brown University in 1989.Career
Aldrich first worked at Xerox as a speechwriter under Executive Vice President Wayland Hicks. Aldrich was appointed by Governor Paul Cellucci to the Massachusetts Joint Committee on Educational Technology from 1996 to 2000, serving as a governor's appointee in Massachusetts. He then moved to Gartner, working in e-learning analysis.Later, he left Gartner to design educational simulations. He founded SimuLearn, which developed training simulations for use in corporate learning environments. The first product released by the company was Virtual Leader, which simulated the conduct of a series of business meetings while balancing professional interactions. In 2003, Aldrich described the game: "The player is in a room discussing issues with simulated characters—'bots'—whose words and behavior are controlled through artificial intelligence."