Meet The Team
Matthew Purdon
Store Owner
Matthew Purdon is the Founder, CEO & Chief Creative Officer for Woander World. Matthew has been inquiring into immersive and interactive forms of entertainment for over thirty years. He was the creator of “The Campus Beat” the first improvised, interactive sitcom for the Web in collaboration with ImprovOlympic and Del Close and co-founded Odyssey Works with Abe Burickson in 2001.
Matthew also has over 25 years of experience managing creative, development, design and product experiences for new and emerging businesses. He most recently worked as Sr. Product Director for Adobe's Digital Media Business leading Adobe's GenStudio solution to help customers use GenerativeAI to fuel their content supply chain. Prior to that, he was the Head of Enterprise Product for Adobe's Creative Cloud. He joined Adobe through the acquisition at Livefyre, where he was SVP of Product & Marketing. Matthew has helped build many other startups, including roles as the VP of High School Services for Chegg and the founding VP of Product for Suzy, an enterprise marketing research software. He has taught UX design for CSU East Bay, San Francisco State University and General Assembly and continues to invest and advise start-ups in creative technologies.
He began his journey as a theatre major at Northwestern University and has worked professionally as a director and an Equity actor. He currently serves on the board of Marin Theatre.
He holds an MFA in Art & Consciousness from JFK University, is an actively practicing landscape painter and a longtime spiritual practitioner of the Diamond Heart path. He lives in Mill Valley with his wife Liz and their 2 children with whom he play tests his latest immersive ideas.
Heather Gallagher
Creative / Strategy Consultant
Heather Gallagher is a creative collaborator and strategist supporting Woander and The Wylding Woods across story development, program design, experience strategy, and business planning. With a background in immersive entertainment and large-scale experience design — including nearly two decades as a senior leader at Burning Man — she brings both imaginative vision and practical know-how to the table.
She’s currently focused on The Circle of Woander, an augmented reality story adventure that blends magical narrative, local lore, and real-world exploration into a one-of-a-kind experience in downtown Mill Valley. Designed as both an adventure and a protection spell, the Circle connects the energy of Mill Valley with the magic of the Wylding Woods — inviting families to reawaken their sense of wonder, curiosity, and connection.
Born on Halloween — when the veil is at its thinnest — Heather is a child of the fairy folk, naturally drawn to storytelling, transformation, and the invisible threads that connect us. At Woander, she helps conjure wonder into the everyday, one spellbinding experience at a time.
Monique Johnson
Branding / Graphic Design
Monique’s early love for exploration and creativity naturally led her to art. Throughout school, she dove headfirst into every art class she could find, even teaching herself calligraphy and painting. What began as a hobby quickly became a calling, thanks to the encouragement of her high school art teacher. That’s when she made the decision to pursue a career in illustration, a path that gave her invaluable skills—everything from understanding color and interpreting visuals to infusing artistic flair into her designs.
Monique’s career has truly been an adventure! She’s worked at startups, design firms, and held roles as both an Art Director and Creative Director. But after the birth of her first child, she took a bold leap—she struck out on her own as a brand designer for small businesses. This is where she truly found her calling. Monique’s love for visual storytelling and joy in helping entrepreneurs express their brand identity became her driving force!
One of the most unique things about Monique is her ability to become a conduit for my clients’ stories. She takes her clients on a collaborative journey, helping them get outside their comfort zones to discover creative leaps that inspire the best brand ideas for their business. For Monique, the process of creating a brand is just as important as the final product, and that philosophy has led to some truly incredible transformations for her clients.
Jackie Tat
Marketing & Community Engagement
Jackie Tat is a brand builder with both heart and hustle. She started her creative journey in photography, capturing content for her guinea pig’s Instagram account—which gained over 1,000 followers back in 2013. From pet influencer beginnings to brand storytelling today, Jackie’s passion for content creation has only grown.
While still in school, she launched her own automotive accessories brand, growing its Instagram presence to over 10K followers in just one year. Since then, she’s helped brands grow their audiences through storytelling, aesthetic content, and data-driven digital marketing strategies. Her work has directly contributed to viral campaigns, six-figure sales goals, and real community connection.
Jackie specializes in building brand voices that feel like home to their audience. Whether she’s crafting an email campaign or designing content for social, Jackie’s favorite part of the job is seeing her work spark genuine engagement and joy.
Jacquelyn Scott
Store / Set Design
Jackie Scott works as a production design and scenic designer for film and theater across the Bay Area. She is designing the interior of the Woander retail store. The idea of the design is to feel as if nature is creeping back in, reclaiming the space. There will be natural elements, pops of whimsy, and lots of color throughout the store.
Zach Fish
In-store Game Design
Zach Fish is a creative producer and interactive designer with over 20 years of experience in live events, narrative experiences, and immersive entertainment. Their work spans immersive theater, interactive digital games, and alternate reality experiences, with a focus on the intersection of technology and storytelling. Zach served as Creative Director at Strange Outfit, where they led the development of three entertainment products, including the interactive game show 100 League! They previously directed Nocturne X at Numina Studio, a 6,000-square-foot responsive alien environment, and produced a five-month ARG campaign with Definitely Real Inc., which reached over 10,000 participants across more than 150 online platforms. Zach is also a longtime member of 13th Floor Theater, where they design and perform in narrative-rich immersive works like Assemblage of Monsters and The Lost Inn. Currently, they are also serving as artistic director of On Beyond, a performance and production company that produces new works by emerging performance artists in the bay area.you can see more of their work at www.Zach.Fish and www.OnBeyond.xyz
Haley Who
Tree Design
Haley Who is a versatile artist whose career spans roles as a Specialty Costumer, Puppet Fabricator, Prop Designer, Production Designer, Puppeteer, Circus Performer, Event Producer and Art Director from film and television to live production.
She has collaborated with major studios like Jim Henson Company, Disney, Nickelodeon, Netflix, and Universal Studios on iconic projects such as The Dark Crystal, Fraggle Rock, Masked Singer, SpongeBob SquarePants, and Five Nights at Freddy’s.
After receiving her BFA in Sculpture, Haley Who has honed her expertise in sculpting, fabrication, and surface treatments, with works permanently displayed at renowned institutions including the San Francisco Zoo, Children’s Discovery Museum, Children’s Museum of Santa Rosa, Madame Tussauds Wax Museum, and the Museum of Moving Image in New York. Her clients have included Arnold Schwarzenegger and Wieden+Kennedy, among others high profile clients.
Driven by a love for creating unforgettable experiences in arts and entertainment, her travels have taken her through 13 countries to study puppetry and performance arts worldwide—from Vietnam and Tokyo to South America and Europe she has experienced the depth of performance arts cultures around the world. She has designed giant puppets for engaging audiences at art festivals such as Lightning in a Bottle, Burning Man, and Maker Faire.
Haley’s collaborations extend to experiential designers, spectacle performers, circus companies, and stage productions for clients like Google, Apple, and Airbnb to name a few. Through her artistry and performances across the globe, she aims to deliver magical experiences that captivate audiences of all ages and bring a spark of wonder to a sometimes mundane world.
Sparks
Wonder Pack Designer
Sparks (they/them) is a relentlessly hopeful, queer, solarpunk experience designer based in Portland, OR. They craft experiences that leverage wonder, play and collective imagination to potentiate systemic change. Sparks gets fired up about building strange and enchanted worlds that provoke new perspectives, elicit behavioral shifts and imagine better futures. They design experiences that help humans connect—with themselves, with our planet, with each other—in unexpected and delightful ways. Sparks is humbled to be part of such a wonderful team of humans (and creatures!) helping to bring Woander to life.
Outside of their work with Woander, they are excited to be designing a climate adventure series, combining components of physical endurance with immersive theatre and climate activism to inspire a new climate story—one where we’re no longer paralyzed spectators, but active, imaginative architects of our collective future.
You can see more of their work at: sparks-of-art.com
Josh Corn
Magic Mirror Designer
Josh is one of the founders and lead creative technologist for Double Take Labs—a transdisciplinary design studio that focuses on developing unique ways of blending creative technology and physical design into interactive experiences. His work includes designing a robotic airport assistant for KLM airlines, custom vending machines and mechanical games, and hardware for immersive theater shows. Josh teaches in the Columbia University School of the Arts' Digital Storytelling Lab with a course called Creative Coding. He also teaches at New York University’s ITP program and CUNY City College of Technology in the Emerging Media Technology department.
Colin Epstein
D&D Game Master
Colin Epstein (they/he) is a multi-disciplinary performer and professional Game Master for Dungeons & Dragons and other RPGs, born & raised in Berkeley. Their career in movement and theater has taken them from teaching kids to juggle in Taiwan to dancing in Europe to stages & sites throughout the Bay Area. You can catch them on stage with 13th Floor, Lizz Roman & Dancers, Tara Pilbrow Dance, and On Beyond; or listen to them on The Roll Report - available wherever you find your podcasts!
You can see more of their work at: Instagram/Bluesky: @therollreportcast
Hannah Lozier
D&D Game Master
Hannah Bradshaw Lozier is an experienced DM, artist, writer, and educator native to North Bay. They believe that imaginative play is one of the best (and most fun) ways to learn and connect with others, and have a DM style oriented around empathy, diversity, and creating impactful character-driven stories. By day, Hannah works as a social media manager for local D&D podcast The Roll Report, and as an after school teacher at Tam Valley Elementary. By night, they craft stories and create art with other passionate nerds along with their two cats, Gatsby and Minerva.
Calvin Lin
Sr. Retail Associate
Calvin is a board game enthusiast from San Francisco. He is also a fan of escape rooms, video games, and all sorts of fun experiences. He is excited to be your guide into the Wylding Woods, and is always ready to recommend your next favorite game — just ask!