Since early childhood, Susan has been fascinated by puzzles and board games. Ten years ago, that lifelong passion sparked an idea for a geometric puzzle tabletop board game, which she sketched on the back of a napkin.

Susan, a landscape architect, is an imaginatively creative design thinker with decades of experience specializing in parks and playground design. Her background in design, problem-solving and creating engaging play experiences proved invaluable as she transformed her original sketch into a tangible game.

The journey has been an exciting ten years, with a few pauses along the way. From 2016 through 2024, Susan served as a City Councilwoman for the quaint town of Campbell, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley. She served as Mayor in 2020, helping lead the community through the unprecedented challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, and served as Mayor again in 2024.

During these years of public service, Susan continued designing her game as time allowed. Her professional skills and talents allowed her to develop the napkin ideas into detailed design concepts, professional artwork for a patent, and the technical CAD drawings for use in prototyping. In 2021, a non-provisional patent application was filed, marking an important milestone in the journey.

From 2020 to 2024, Susan’s game development phase included hosting home parties and gaming events, inviting people across a variety of age groups and skill levels to play-test the game. The rules and instructions were critiqued and improved. More prototyping, more revisions, more play-testing. The feedback gathered during this process provided invaluable insights that helped enhance and improve the game.

When her final term as Mayor ended in 2024, Susan’s full attention was focused on getting the game in the hands of puzzle lovers and board game enthusiast. She named the game ‘Geozzle, the Geometric Puzzle’, brought on a graphic designer for the logo and the trademark application was submitted. By late spring of 2025, Susan finished designing the game box, artwork for the instructions and CAD drawings for the puzzle pieces and gameboard. By summer she started working with the manufacturer for a first production limited run of 1000 games. In early 2026, Geozzle, the Geometric Puzzle, a tabletop board game landed on store shelves in Campbell and is spreading throughout the Silicon Valley.

After a decade of imagination, persistence, design, and development, Susan’s idea that started on that little napkin had become a reality. (She is still looking for the napkin)

Geozzle is a registered trademark and was granted U.S. Patent No. 12,434,128 B2, dated Oct. 7, 2025.