Kellee Santiago | |
|---|---|
 Santiago at the Game Developers Conference in 2010 | |
| Born | |
| Occupation(s) | Game designer, producer |
| Known for | Thatgamecompany |
| Notable work | Cloud, Flow, Flower, Journey |
| Spouse | Mike Stein |
| Website | kelleesantiago |
Kellee Santiago is a Venezuelan American video game designer and producer. She is the co-founder and former president of thatgamecompany. Santiago was born in Caracas, Venezuela, and raised in Richmond, Virginia, where Santiago played video games from a young age and was encouraged by her software engineer father to experiment with computers. While attending New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, she became active in experimental theater, planning to pursue it after earning a master's degree in the Interactive Media Program of the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. However, Santiago became involved in video game design and produced Cloud, a game developed by Jenova Chen and a student team. Its success sparked her and Chen to found thatgamecompany upon graduating, and she became the president.
Santiago produced the studio's first two games, Flow and Flower, moving more into her president role during the development of the third game, Journey. In addition to her work at thatgamecompany, Santiago is one of the backers of the Indie Fund. Indie Fund is a group that invests in the development of independent video games and is a TED fellow. She married the fellow University of Southern California graduate Mike Stein in 2010. After the release of Journey in 2012, Santiago left the company; since then, Santiago has served on several advisory boards and worked for Ouya and Google Play Games in several roles. In 2019, she joined Niantic as the head of developer relations.