FunPlus was founded in 2010 with the establishment of DianDian Interactive, a casual simulation game studio that received financial backing from several prominent Silicon Valley VC investors. Over the following four years, DianDian released a number of successful social games on Facebook including Family Farm, Royal Story, and Happy Acres. In 2013 DianDian launched its first mobile game, Family Farm Seaside. In 2016, FunPlus sold DianDian (subsequently renamed Century Games) to the Century Huatong Group, a listed company on the Shenzhen stock exchange for $1 billion. FunPlus continues to invest in a wide range of game studios and related projects globally.

In 2016, Andy co-founded KingsGroup, a global mobile game company focusing initially on MMO mobile strategy games. King of Avalon, a medieval-themed 4x strategy game, was released in 2017 and achieved huge worldwide success, becoming a #1 game in 68 countries on both Android and Apple mobile platforms. Quick on the heels of KingsGroup’s initial success, Guns of Glory, set in the ‘Age of Discovery’period achieved similar global success and firmly established KingsGroup as a top mobile studio in the strategy game genre. ZDay, which has a World Wars theme, was released in 2018, followed in 2019 by State of Survival, a post-apocalyptic zombie-themed game. State of Survival has a storyline where there has been an outbreak of a dangerous virus that wreaks havoc on civilization, a theme that has had huge resonance with players worldwide in 2020.

Andy founded FunPlus Phoenix, the 2019 League of Legends world championship esports team and has been a pioneer investor in digital interactive entertainment, including puzzle games, game live streaming, VR content, player vs. player competition, and other innovative game concepts.

A key differentiator of all of Andy’s game creations is their ability to connect people from around the world in common purpose, friendship, and shared fun. The mobile MMO (massive multiplayer online) game format that Andy has developed brings players from everywhere together in gameplay that is coupled with a proprietary 23-language translation engine, enabling players to communicate across cultures, make friendships and join together in a spirit of fun team play.

Andy splits time across game studio offices in Switzerland, USA, Sweden, BJ, and others.

“It was wonderful to start a new job and realize I didn’t have to explain Transcendental Meditation,” said Jennie. “People see it as an asset in my background that makes me better suited to handling stress and coming up with creative ideas.”

Jennie grew up in Fairfield, IA, and earned a major in literature and a minor in writing at MIU in 1997. She loved learning about the world through storytelling. After completing the Transcendental Meditation Teacher Training Course, she went to graduate school at UC-Berkeley in journalism.

In 2006 Jennie started working at The Atlantic magazine as senior editor. She was instrumental in developing the online version of the magazine and turning it into a robust Internet publication. Now she writes and edits articles for the print edition of Smithsonian, which satisfies her curiosity and thirst for knowledge. “The whole driving force behind the magazine is knowledge and the excitement of learning new things,” she said. “It’s great to be part of that.”

Steve’s newest book, Love Is Just Damn Good Business, published by McGraw-Hill, has been featured on the World Economic Forum website. Steve is also the founder and CEO of The Extreme Leadership Institute – an organization devoted to helping companies develop award-winning cultures and achieve radical results. His institute’s team has helped more than 25 companies earn a ranking on the Best Places to Work list.

Charlotte has taught at a medical school in Copenhagen for several years. She is currently running a private clinic in Copenhagen, Denmark, supplementing modern medicine with Maharishi Ayurveda, and has given more than 30,000 ayurvedic consultations. She writes as a columnist in several national magazines and is the author of several books on topics of ayurveda. She is a presenter to the government in Denmark and has been selected as the foremost representative of ayurveda from Denmark to India where she has collaborated with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She is Vice President for the European Ayurveda Medical Association (EURAMA) and has been awarded the PANACEA international excellence award from Vanaushadhi Vidyapeetha, International Conference on Ayurveda and Holistic Healing, from Government of Maharastra, India.

Kenichi developed an interest in politics as a teenager and pursued it with the conviction that politics is a means to creating an ideal government that positively affects people’s lives in the direction of improved health, happiness, and prosperity. He came to MIU to study government and to follow a healthy lifestyle, including the practice of the Transcendental Meditation® technique. During his time at MIU he interned with Iowa’s US Senator Chuck Grassley and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. In 1996 he obtained an MA in sociology from the University of Essex.

For more than 20 years he has been devoted to establishing a two-party democratic political system in Japan and has worked for numerous political leaders, including former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama. In recent years, he has been involved with the International Conference of Asian Political Parties (ICAPP), which Kenichi describes as “Asia’s largest political forum, and a place where political leaders can speak freely about issues toward its ultimate goal of an Asian community.”