European Women in Games Conference

Alison Norrington is a storyteller, writer & producer, Founder & Chief Creative Director of storycentral, a London-based entertainment studio that incubates and develops ground-breaking IP with global partners in film, television, animation, publishing, advertising, branding, theme parks, Virtual Reality and gaming.  

As a Creative Director/Strategist Alison has worked on a range of intellectual properties that are founded on robust story worlds with strong core themes and have genuine and relevant touch points across a host of media channels. 

She specializes in storytelling that amplifies fan incubation and engagement, experience design, extending IP & franchises, community build through story and storyworld strategy, incubation & development – all centered around a strong robust core of story architecture, theme, awareness of audience and experience design.

Anisa Sanusi is a UI/UX Designer currently working on mobile games. She is also Program Director of Limit Break, a mentorship program for developers of underrepresented genders in the games industry. Throughout the years Anisa has cultivated a devotion to ethical UX design, speaking at the first UX Summit held at GDC in San Francisco and also served as a Juror for the BAFTA Games Awards for multiple years.

Anisa is an advocate for diversity and inclusivity in the industry, and this year she was listed as one of GamesIndustry.Biz Top 100 Influential Women in the UK Games Industry.

Game designer and producer with over 20 years experience in the games industry. Anna started professional life as a junior designer working on PS1 games at Sony, and has worked as a designer for Acclaim, Eidos, Creative Assembly on a wide variety of games and platforms including TombRaider Anniversary and Underworld, as well as freelance for Dont Nod and Tequila Works.

After a few years heading up indie mobile developers Lady Shotgun and Tickity Boom, she’s now back in Triple A games working for Deep Silver Dambuster Studios, first as Associate Design Director and now as Feature Producer, responsible for combat and all things violent.

Cassia Curran runs Wings Fund, a for-profit game financing fund for female and minority developers. Wings Fund aims to make gaming more diverse and
inclusive place for everyone by enabling the creation of awesomely fun, original games from new and different perspectives.

Previously Cassia was Head of Business Development at Jagex in the UK, and prior to that worked in international business development and investor relations at NetEase in China.

Catharina is the CEO and co-founder of award-winning indie company Sarepta studio. She has been working for 9 years in the game industry, primarily within the fields of management and game design. Sarepta’s goal is to create emotionally impactful games. 

In addition to her leadership role at Sarepta Studio, she is Chairman of the board of Norway’s first game developer collective: Hamar Game Collective.

Charlotte is an indie game developer working and living in Utrecht, The Netherlands. In 2016, she graduated cum laude with a Bachelors in Interactive Performance Design at the Utrecht School of Arts. Since then, she worked on Lily, Rosa's Garden and other art games. Whenever she isn’t making games, she likes to organize meetups for the Women in Games community in the Netherlands. She is inspired by flowers, biology, psychology and expressing political or personal topics in games.

After 10 years in the video games industry, Claire decided to focus on making games that help scientific research. In 2016, she launched her website,  citscigames.com, and started writing about citizen science games, giving talks, and leading round tables to raise awareness about these games.

She joined the Human Computation Institute and began working on Stall Catchers, a gamified citizen science project that speeds up Alzheimer's
research. 

She recently started 'Think Crowd' a company dedicated to the production of games for science, and is currently working on VR technology applied to biomedical research.

Claire has been at the forefront of games development for nearly 20 years, working across production, design and narrative to deliver innovative and award-winning games.

She has worked at several major studios including Kuju Entertainment, Media Molecule and PlayStation London Studio, where her responsibilities included leading the creative relationship with J.K Rowling on the BAFTA nominated Wonderbook: Book of Spells and its sequel Book of Potions.
 
Claire is currently consulting for two start-up game studios on a mix of VR drama and story driven adventure games as well as crafting her own game, which features a female visually impaired protagonist.

As an elected member of the BAFTA Games Committee and the Vice Chair of the BGI, she’s a keen advocate for diversity and inclusion within the games industry.

Claire has worked for global brands, managing Marketing and PR across the games industry and founded her own company, Sharkbit.

She has sponsored Special Effect, Gamescom and more while participating in panels and talks across Europe. She is Head of Marketing and PR with BAFTA-nominated and Develop Star winning Weather Factory.

She also runs Pixelnebriation, an event that focuses on inclusion, socialising and career support.

Elin Festøy is the creative producer of the award-winning mobile game "My Child Lebensborn", produced by her personal company Teknopilot AS.

Her career includes work in digital media, journalism, communication and film
production. She is currently a research fellow at The Norwegian Film School, working on a VR experience on the topic of Children Born of War.

Emily Short is Chief Product Officer and an executive director at Spirit AI, where she works with natural language processing and generation, character moods and social behavior, and conversation modelling.

She was previously the creative director of the Versu project, building interactive iPad stories around AI character agents. She has an extensive background in games writing and narrative design as well as tooling for writing interactive fiction.

Her blog can be found at http://emshort.blog.

Emma Smith leads Creative Assembly’s Legacy Project and sits on the Next Gen Skills Employer Steering Group. From playground to industry, the Legacy Project is the studio’s commitment to educating, inspiring and supporting the games development talent of tomorrow and promoting games as a power for good. As part of this work Creative Assembly has partnered with BAFTA and the East London Arts and Music Academy.

Ghislaine Boddington is an award winning artist, curator and director, specialising in the future human, body responsive technologies and immersive experiences.

She is Co-founder/Creative Director of body>data<space, a pioneering interactive creative design collective who have advocated for the living body to be at the heart of the digital debate since the early 1990s.

With a background in performing arts and a long term focus on the blending of our virtual and physical bodies, she engages diverse audiences in her research “The Internet of Bodies”, linking topical debates on personal data usage, representation of the self and body enhancements for the future.

She keynotes worldwide, consults for the creative industries sector, and regularly works as a curator for exhibitions and debates, including for Nesta’s FutureFest events (2015-18).

A Reader in Digital Immersion at  University of Greenwich , in 2017 she was awarded the international IX Immersion Experience Visionary Pioneer Award by the Society for Arts and Technology.

Ghislaine is spokesperson for the Deutsche Bank  Women Entrepreneurs in Social Tech
accelerator and a Trustee for the Stemettes. You can hear her present as bi-weekly Studio Expert for BBC Digital Planet (formerly BBC Click), the BBC World Service Radio flagship technology programme/podcast.

Jenny is Associate Director at Bryter, a market research agency specialising in gaming research. She works with a variety of companies in the gaming industry, helping to understand player experiences and perceptions across a range of platforms and games.
 
Alongside regular client work, she is also the driver of an independent annual study around Female Gamers in the UK and US, exploring experiences of abuse and discrimination, as well as perceptions of the industry and gender representation.

Jess Hyland is an artist at Wonderstruck Games. She is also a feminist, a founding member of Game Workers Unite UK, and the author of an annual report on the the gender pay gap in the UK games industry. She’s been making games for ten years now and hopes to go for a few more.

Jo is CEO of Ukie, the trade body for UK games and interactive entertainment, making the UK the
best place in the world to make, sell and play games. She is also Deputy Chair of the British Screen Advisory Council, London Tech Ambassador, Chair of the BAFTA Games Committee and BAFTA Trustee, an Ambassador on the Mayor of London’s Cultural Leadership Board, and Creative Industries Council member.

In 2016 she was awarded an OBE for services to the creative industries and won the MCV 30 Women in Games award for Outstanding Contribution. She also won Industry Hero in 2019. She is a VP for games and accessibility charity, SpecialEffect and the government’s Sector Champion for Disabilities.

Previously, Jo was Channel 4 Education Commissioning Editor where she commissioned Digital Emmy-winning Battlefront II (not the game), free to play browser and iOS games and social media projects. Jo was Multiplatform Commissioner for BBC Entertainment
& Switch, BBC Three Multiplatform Channel Editor, and technology reporter for BBC News.
Her doctorate in the late 1990s was an ethnography exploring identity and concepts of difference in place based and virtual communities. In 2018 Jo was awarded an Honorary Visiting Professorship by Ravensbourne University.

Jude is CEO and Founder of Playmob, a platform ‘making every click count’ by connecting socially conscious advertisers to millions of engaged global gamers. Jude has a passion for games for good, profit with purpose business models, start-ups, problem solving and innovation.

Jude was awarded an MBE in the 2015 New Years Honours list for services to Entrepreneurship. She has been voted top 100 women in Tech in Europe and in the Creative England Top 50.

More recently, she won the Talent Unleashed award as the ‘One to Watch in 2015’. She is also a BAFTA games judge and judges for the Burberry Breakthrough Brit Awards and speaker at various events such as Mashable Social Good Summit, SXSW, MADE Festival, Mobile Games Forum, Women in Games.

Kat Scaife is Head of Partnerships at Ditch the Label and is responsible for leading Ditch the Label’s relationships with the Gaming Industry. Ditch the Label is a digital pro-equality and anti-bullying charity helping young people aged 12-25. Ditch the Label is committed to helping young people play the games they love, free from discrimination and abuse. They directly support young people who are impacted by bullying in gaming and are working with the industry to tackle prejudice and discrimination that can lead to bullying behaviours.

Larra Anderson is Dean of Screen at London College of Communication,
University of the Arts London. She leads a vibrant school of games design, games art, animation, visual effects, virtual reality, film, television, and sound arts and design. 

She is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and a member of the European Film Academy. 

Prior to joining UAL, she was the Director of the Northern Film School at Leeds Beckett University.

Liz Prince is the Business Manager at multi-award-winning games recruitment specialist Amiqus. She has been in recruitment for 25 years and a woman in games for almost 15 years.

In 2018, she launched the G Into Gaming campaign to accelerate change in building more gender diverse and inclusive workplaces in games with actionable steps.

Putting the G into Gaming has four focuses:
• Attracting women into games from other industries
• Supporting women already working in the games sector
• Working with schools, universities and colleges to promote games as an attractive career option for girls and young women
• Providing studios with practical advice on how they can address gender imbalance, regardless of their size

G Into Gaming is a completely pro bono initiative, funded by Amiqus.

Lottie’s a producer and co-founder of BAFTA-nominated narrative microstudio Weather Factory, the studio responsible for Cultist Simulator and BOOK OF HOURS. She's one of the youngest female founders in the industry, a current BAFTA Breakthrough Brit and founder of Coven Club, a women in games support network.

She produces, bizzes and arts at Weather Factory and previously worked on Fallen London, Sunless Sea, Zubmariner and Sunless Skies as producer at Failbetter Games.

Lucy Brown is a media educator, producer and author. Lucy began her career at Sight & Sound, the British Film Institute's film magazine, before moving into production and then academia.

She has filmed around the world making an eclectic range of highly regarded programmes for the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Nickelodeon and Disney. She has credits on multiple BAFTA and RTS winning programmes and is regularly invited to sit on jury panels, chair events and present at international conferences including South by Southwest (SXSW), Fest New Films/New Directors and the Africa International Film Festival (AFRIFF).

She has taught at film schools in Shanghai, Lagos, Kuala Lumpur and Mumbai and is the winner of a number of Excellence in Education Awards.

She is a member of The Institute of Leadership and Management, Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and an Executive Board member for the National Association for Higher Education in the Moving Image (NAHEMI).

Lucy is a passionate advocate for gender equality and is the Founder and Director of Trailblazing Women On and Off Screen and co- author of The TV Studio Production Handbook published by I.B.Tauris/Bloomsbury.

Managing a successful freelance career, Lucy’s art has helped bring more than 20 games to life. With nearly 9 years’ experience in the games industry, she is an advocate for its improvement through her work as a Women Making Games NE admin and Women in Games and STEM ambassador.

Manjul is a social entrepreneur with extensive experience in developing tech products and services in the health and wellbeing sector.

She has led the design and development of multi-award winning digital interventions, founded Eye Heroes a charity to overcome preventable sight loss, started up 'Soulscape' a wellbeing travel company delivering creative expeditions in remote parts of the world and has presented at the Global Mental Health Summit 2019, NHS Expo 2018, PHE 2018, Service Design Fringe 2018.

Mariana Lucia Marquez, Founder of Metaspeech, is a choreographer and public speaking coach. Drawing from movement direction, neuroscience and somatic research, Metaspeech’s training develops the necessary soft skills (active listening, giving and receiving feedback, empathy, and leadership) to excel at conscious communication: from pitching and presenting to chairing meetings or motivating your team.

Mariana holds an MA in Choreography, is an ICF-certified Executive Coach and a Level1 Kundalini Yoga Teacher.

Marie-Claire Isaaman is CEO of Women in Games (WIGJ) a not for profit working to address gender imbalance, inequality, diversity and Inclusion in the game industries. She engages with a wide range of businesses and organization as a consultant and researcher.

She is named in The Market for Computer and Video Games (MCV) 2014, 2015 Annual Top 100 UK Women in Video Games list, the GamesIndustry.Biz 100 most influential people in Video Games list 2019.

Women in Games was awarded the TIGA (UK Trade Body for Games Developers & Digital Publishers) Games Industry Diversity Award 2017 and as CEO she was presented with a Special Award at GameRome 2018 for her work on diversity in the sector.

She is currently a Trustee for OCA [Open College of the Arts] – Orto Stella Charity [a Norfolk based Charity] Empowering Women Lives After Domestic Abuse. And the BGI [Championing British Games Culture].

Rachael Gregg-Smythe is the producer at PlayStation's Manchester Studio, responsible for the production and development of a new project for the PlayStation VR platform. Previously, she has worked at Cubic Motion and Roll7 Games, and has produced various titles across consoles and PC.

Rachael is also a co-founder and director of Girls' Games Lab, a non-profit organisation that brings game design and coding workshops to young girls around the UK.

She also is an advisory board member and the North West regional coordinator for the Women in Games organisation.

Rachele Doimo is the Art Director at Square Enix, responsible for artistic vision, quality and production efficiencies, covering all aspects of game art including conceptual development, character and environment art, animation and visual effects, UI/UX, graphic design and marketing visual support. She has 15 years of game development experience across different genre and platforms.

Main Videogame Accreditations: Max Payne 3, GTA V and Red Dead Redemption II for Rockstar Games, Homefront: the Revolution for Deep Silver, Dirty Bomb for Splash Damage.

Roberta Lucca is a Serial Entrepreneur, Forbes Top 50 Women in Tech, YouTuber and Angel investor. She is a founder of the BAFTA-winning Bossa Studios, a games developer & publisher renowned for their most iconic genre-defining games created with influencers and loved by millions of people worldwide. 

In the last 9 years, Roberta and her team based in London have grown Bossa from a blank canvas into a multi-million-dollar business with games hits such as Surgeon Simulator and I Am Bread.

Having both succeeded and failed in key areas of starting and growing multiple businesses, raising millions in investment, launching products and leading teams, Roberta loves sharing her lessons learned as a speaker, mentor and creator on her own YouTube channel – Beta Lucca.

In addition to being a member of the Norwich University of the Arts Games Art and Design BA teaching team, Sharon Tolaini-Sage is a translator and writer on design for Eye Magazine.

She specialises in lecturing on the cultural, contextual and storytelling aspects of digital games, as well as working with students on their analytical and academic writing skills.

In 2017 she was appointed an Ambassador for Women in Games, and in 2019 she joined the Women in Games Advisory Board. ​

Shivani is a tech auteur and the founder of Brightlobe, a VC-backed child health startup and videogames studio. Following a lifetime of coding, academic achievement and entrepreneurial success, Shivani created Brightlobe as an enterprise with a social purpose.

Brightlobe is making pioneering mobile ecosystems featuring unique vibrant narratives, offering immersive video game experiences which can assess health factors in children. At Brightlobe, she is responsible for driving company growth, formation of new commercial partnerships and leading the development of proprietary technology.