Franco De Joya
Educator · Poet · Tabletop Game Designer

Franco De Joya is an educator and designer with a passion for empowering learning through design that’s thoughtful, playful, and rooted in real-world impact.

With over six years working across schools, startups, and academic spaces, he brings a rare blend of classroom insight, creative facilitation, and design thinking to every project.

Franco’s journey has taken him from English classrooms in Western Sydney to co-founding Edhance, an education startup that earned the University of Sydney’s Student Innovation Award. He’s designed and led hackathons, co-designed tools for organisational design sprints for UNICEF and Microsoft, and is building The School Collaboratory—a game-inspired toolkit to help school communities solve real problems together.

His work has been shared on stages big and small—from TeachMeets and school professional learning to SXSW, APLEC, and university research workshops. Whether working with students, teachers, or executive teams, Franco is known for creating engaging, energising spaces that make creativity feel practical and possible.

He’s also a tabletop game designer, with a published title under Button Shy Games and more in development under his indie studio Tinker Token Tabletop Games.

Rooted in a belief that education and community power transformation and change for good, Franco’s work lives at the intersection of design, dialogue, and discovery.