Elan Lee named 2026 Outstanding Alumnus

Elan Lee ’98 (computer science), creator of the Exploding Kittens gaming empire, has been named RIT’s Outstanding Alumnus for 2026.

Established by the Office of the President in 1952, this is the highest honor RIT can bestow upon a graduate. It is in recognition of professional accomplishments as well as service and generosity to the university. The award was presented during Academic Convocation on May 8.

“Being asked to come back like this is really meaningful to me, especially because nothing about my career has been a straight line,” said Lee. “I hope to share the lessons I’ve learned from falling on my face repeatedly, and the tools we need to get back up afterwards.”

After graduating from RIT, Lee worked his way up to the role of chief design officer at Microsoft Xbox. He eventually quit that job and embarked on a one-year break to figure out what to do next.

A few weeks later, he was building the Exploding Kittens game along with his friend Matthew Inman, a cartoonist who runs The Oatmeal. The card game is a version of Russian roulette powered by cartoon kitties. They launched the game in 2015 and raised a record-breaking almost $9 million on Kickstarter in 30 days.

Since then, the Exploding Kittens publishing company has sold more than 60 million games globally and published dozens of other tabletop games, digital games, a Netflix show, and merchandise.

In 2026, The Toy Association named Exploding Kittens: The Board Game as the Game of the Year. Some of the company’s other popular party titles include Throw Throw Burrito, Poetry for Neanderthals, and A Game of Cat and Mouth.

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Elan Lee, creator of Exploding Kittens.

In 2020-2021, Lee was named the Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences Distinguished Alumnus. Lee is based in Toronto, while the company headquarters are in Los Angeles.

Lee explained that throughout his professional life, he has worked several jobs in the creative storytelling field. He said that he was able to work his way up the ranks not because he has incredible creative abilities, but because he could also do the technical side of things.

“My creative abilities are on par with everybody else’s,” said Lee. “But, when something broke, I could function as a one-person IT department. I could write budgets and spreadsheets and manage schedules and large teams. I think that was very unique to my training and time at RIT.”