Josh Glazer ‘96, a principal engineer at Riot Games, spoke to students on Nov. 6 at break about his experiences as a former game developer and his current position. Glazer played a prominent role in the start up the popular game, League of Legends, and has visited Harvard-Westlake for the past six years to speak to students.

The presentation, organized by middle school programming teacher, Jessica Kaufman inspired her and her students. Glazer gave advice by encouraging aspiring game makers to practice and make programs as much as they can. He also emphasized trial and error when making video games and encourages teamwork as it is a big part of his job.

Peter Shen ‘22 wrote in an email about how he was inspired by meeting Glazer.

“I look up to him [Glazer] and he inspires me. I’m fascinated by computer science, and just meeting someone who does something like that is really cool and inspires me to try harder and learn more computer science, to try and get to where he is,” Shen said.

Kaufman wrote in an email of the importance of alumni and mentors like Glazer coming to speak to young programmers.

“It’s inspiring to meet an HW alum who enjoys what he does for a living and has made a successful career from a love of computer games.

Kaufman also points out that in Josh’s LinkedIn, he says “I do awesome, challenging, exciting things and get paid to do them. How cool is that?”