Sam Bigland

Active Defence: Gamifying Digital Safety for the Next Generation

My name is Sam Bigland, and I am a Technical Delivery Lead at Experian. As someone who bypassed university to start my career as an apprentice, I have always championed the power of “learning by doing.”

I am honoured to be selected as a Roosevelt Scholar to launch my project, Active Defence. My mission is born from a worrying reality: while fraud technology gets smarter, young people are increasingly becoming targets for scams, yet the education provided to them remains outdated and passive.

I believe that to protect the next generation, we need to stop lecturing them and start engaging them. I will be travelling across the USA, from the “Serious Games” labs of Pittsburgh to the indie developers of Austin and the tech giants of San Francisco, to research how gamification and simulation can revolutionise safety education.

I am incredibly excited to immerse myself in American culture and learn from the world’s best innovators. My goal is to return to Nottinghamshire with a “Digital Safety Toolkit”, a live roadshow of interactive mini-games that will train our local students to spot fraud in real-time, protecting their financial futures through the power of play.