European Women in Games Conference

Abbey Wesson's career spans consulting, executive development, product and service design, public speaking, community building and performing. In the last 5 years Abbey has worked in 25 countries across 4 continents, with executives and CEOS at McKinsey, Google, DeepMind, Tesco, Nestle, Novartis, Zinc VC and over 15 start ups.

Abbey helps individuals and teams unlock more of their potential and convert their creative visions to reality. Her unique and powerful approach covers purpose, performance, people dynamics and practical systems/environments.

To find out more about Abbey's work, contact abbey.h.wesson@gmail.com

Alice Rendell is a Senior Narrative Designer with 9+ years of experience, currently working at Massive Entertainment - A Ubisoft Studio in Malmo, Sweden.

She has worked on a variety of narrative games including episodic adventure The Descendant, indie project The Monster in Me and JRPG Zodiac: Orcanon Odyssey, which she worked on with Final Fantasy veteran, Kazushige Nojima.

In 2014 she was named one of Develop Online’s 30 under 30 and in 2015 MCV’s Top 100 Women in Games.

When not developing, playing or thinking about video games you will find Alice curled up with a good book, surrounded by her two mischievous felines, Furi and Jin.

Ana is the Course Leader of the VR Master’s Programme at London College of Communication, where she also teaches VR content creation and immersive storytelling.

She has a PhD in Human Computer Interaction for VR content design and is a visiting fellow at The Open University.
Her current research focuses on the use of VR in changing bystander behaviors in cases of sexual harassment, a Nesta-funded project in collaboration with King’s College London and LADbible. She is also working on a project to support SMEs in creating immersive content, an ERDF-funded project in collaboration with London South Bank University. Her broader wish is to increase the accessibility of VR and raise awareness about its potential use in everyday life.

Anisah is the founder and CEO of 23 Code Street. This is a trailblazing and award-winning coding school for ALL women that gives them the tools and skills that are required to build our future. They strongly believe that our workforce must represent the society we live in. For every paying student, 23 Code Street teaches digital skills to women in the slums of Mumbai.

Anisah is also the Director of the London arm of Backstage Capital- a venture capital fund Investing in underrepresented founders, namely women, people of colour and LGBTQ+ founders.

This year, Anisah was named as part of Forbes' 30 under 30 list. Creative Review also named her one of their Creative Leaders 50.

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.

Clare Wilson from the Collaborative Consulting Group, who has worked with over 30 companies in the past 10 years including 4 Gaming companies.

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.

Ellie specialises in providing practical and commercial advice on a range of employment law matters to commercial organisations, educational institutions, charities and not for profit organisations.

She is experienced in both contentious and non-contentious matters including disciplinary, grievance and capability procedures, general day to day HR queries, staff contracts, handbooks and policies, workplace disputes, settlement agreements and business reorganisations. Ellie enjoys keeping up to date with developments in the law and is a regular contributor to the weekly VWV Employment law brief.

Outside of work, Ellie's interests include travel, theatre and sports - with a particular passion for netball!

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.

With over 15 years’ experience in the games industry, Emma leads in all areas of talent management at Outplay. In 7 short years, she has helped Outplay Entertainment transform into the UK’s largest independent mobile gaming studio, developing a creative and progressive culture for the studio to thrive within and assembled a large and diverse team of the industry’s top talent.

Felicia "Licia" Prehn is an almost completely blind game producer,
writer, and voice actress based in Finland. She is the head of
production at Nopia Oy Ltd, an independent animation and games studio, and is also Finland's most active accessibility advocate.

Outside of the game industry, she is a eurodance artist under the name MC Licia, DJ, and blogger.

Francesca Rosella is a fashion designer, architect, wearable technology visionary, and sustainability champion. In 2004 she founded CuteCircuit, the world’s first wearable technology fashion brand, pioneering the merging of fashion with technology and creating groundbreaking award-winning fashions that have been featured in exhibitions and publications all over the world over the past 15 years.

One of the recent innovations related to the field of augmented reality and gaming is the SoundShirt, honoured by Fast Company in 3 Innovation by Design categories (Fashion and Beauty, Experimental, and Social Good), and included in January 2019 as part of the Access+Ability exhibition at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Francesca received the Netexplo Innovation Award 2019 from UNESCO and holds a number of patents in the field of wearable technology, such as sensor-enhanced fabric constructions and multimedia wearable telecommunication devices.

Chief People and Business Development Officer for Dovetail
Games, as well as Ambassador Director for Women in Games.
HR professional for over fifteen years.

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.

Working directly with Studio Director, we ensure that we not only make great games, but we are a successful business as well. My direct remit includes finance, studio PR, office environment and IT. Alongside this, the most important and exciting part of my role is building a team of highly talented creative colleagues and ensuring that we surround them with a culture that is diverse and inclusive. Which, in turn, will provide our teams with an environment that they feel valued, have a purpose and are given the ability to grow.

Before Sumo, I have worked in the industry for the last 12 years, working for SEGA and Codemasters. Most notably helping to build SEGA HARDlight, from inception until early 2019. A proud moment was in 2018 GI.biz recognised it as one of the best places to work.

I have a background in accounting, and before joining the games industry, working in a range of industries, including financial services, construction and advertising.

I am a proud Ambassador for SpecialEffect, a charity that helps anyone with a physical disability that limits or stops you from playing game… play games. And recently joined the advisory board for Women in Games.

Last year I was named among the Top 100 Most Infuencial Women in Games by gamesindustry.biz.

Harriet is Diversity Manager at  eSynergy Solutions. Harriet helps organisations engage with diverse technical communities to raise their profile and share their story. She is passionate about raising awareness about Gender Balance and Neurodiversity by supporting organisations in understanding that by hiring diverse teams they are creating their own opportunity for growth and innovation.

She is also the co-organiser of the  BEEqual meetup and Mindful Leadership Breakfast series and Diversity Advocate winner of the Future Stars of Tech 2019.

Dr Isabel Van De Keere is the Founder & CEO of Immersive Rehab, a digital health startup that offers personalised and engaging neurorehabilitation programmes using Virtual Reality with the aim to improve patient recovery. The goal is to increase the effectiveness of neurorehabilitation, to reduce patient referral times, to make rehab fun and engaging, and to have better patient outcomes. Following a long neurorehabilitation period Isabel went through herself due to a work accident, she decided to start Immersive Rehab in August 2016.

With a background in Electro-Mechanical Engineering (MSc) and as a Doctor in Biomedical Engineering & BioMaterial Science (PhD), Isabel is passionate about healthcare technologies, digital health, immersive technologies (VR/AR) and its applications in healthcare, using tech for good, social entrepreneurship, and
promoting women in tech.

Isla Suddek is fascinated by people and how they become high-achievers. As a Confidence Coach, Isla delivers workshops on how to identify your limiting beliefs and create an empowering mindset. From a lonely and shy Londoner to life coach and improv comedian, Isla now helps women and men reach their potential.

Jasmine is a creative director and experience designer in games,
transmedia and festivals, as well as an award winning film director, cyborg artist and founder of a game art gallery and the game innovation lab Collaboratory. 

Jasmine has studied game culture from early archaeological finds to future cyborg interfaces, worked in the industry, from art house productions to the team that built EAs R&D lab, does community work for diversity, inclusion, STEAM education, lectures at the main universities in Sweden and volunteers in organisations like IGDA and advisory boards.

Archive of work and studies available at www.isdrake.com

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.

Jessica is a composer for games, contributing music to a range of indie titles. With further success in the worlds of theatre and animation, Jessica has received accolades for her music in the US, Germany and the UK. This year she has joined the BAFTA Crew Games programme and is passionate about role models for women in game audio.

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.

Kate spent a decade covering the world’s most violent conflicts from Syria and Iraq to Ukraine as
a foreign correspondent. In 2011, her husband was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade while they
were reporting from the frontlines in Libya. His survival motivated her to disrupt her journalistic
career to investigate how immersive technologies can be used to help people working in hostile
environments. She is now co-founder of Also Known As.

Lara is an award winning woman’s development specialist and Co-Founder of Woman 5.0. 

She runs the acclaimed woman’s development programs RISE for
companies who are  committed to develop the talent of women; she supports senior women to succeed in their positions through executive coaching, and also works with individuals to develop their personal leadership, be more confident, and reach their goals in a conscious and feminine ways. Although she holds a degree in literature, she has more than 20 years of international experience in progressive leadership roles and managing large team operations across organizations in the private, corporate and public sectors.

Lara is also a Coach blogger for Psychologies magazine, has spoken on stages around the world, including a TEDx, has featured in a documentary about inspirational women on PBS TV (USA), is a NED for 2 startups and supports refugees to help them re-gain their confidence.

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.

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.

Marianne Monaghan is an American video game producer. She began as a script editor for Konami, moved into production at LucasArts, and is currently the Head of Production at Hangar 13’s Novato studio. She has worked on such franchises as Suikoden, Metal Gear, Silent Hill, Knights of the Old Republic, The Force Unleashed and Mafia, among others. Before entering the video game industry, Marianne worked in software development on a wide range of projects, including the first computer system used in Major League Baseball for game tactics and planning.

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.

Rosa is a freelance game designer. She worked as a lead game designer at Nexus Studios, was behind the UK viral election hit CorbynRun, created the map of The Chinese Room’s Dear Esther, and has released many personal games on itch.io. Her games have been exhibited at the Somerset House in London and Babycastles in New York.

She is MCV’s Campaigner of the Year 2018 and strives to make the games industry a better place for minorities, one community and one game at a time.

Professor Sarah Atkinson is Head of Department of Culture, Media & Creative Industries, King's College London and co-editor of Convergence:
The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies.

Sarah has published widely on the impacts of digital technologies on cinema audiences and film production practices. Sarah has undertaken
extensive work into the Live Cinema economy and is currently working on a number of funded immersive media projects (AHRC/EPSRC, SSHRC & Innovate UK). She is currently co-investigator on the international project ‘ReFig - Refiguring Innovation in Games’ leading on mixed reality and virtual reality research initiatives.

Sarah is a technologist, entrepreneur, NED and angel investor. In 2014 she co-founded the fast-growing and award-winning angel network, Angel Academe. Our investors are mainly but not only women and we invest in women founded and co-founded technology startups with high growth potential.

Investments include: Provenance, which uses the blockchain to improve food supply chain transparency; Raremark which uses AI to help patients with rare diseases make informed choices about care; and Fiskl, a fintech for micro-businesses.

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.

Simay is  the co-founder of Recontact Digital Arts and game producer of award
winning cinematographic 'Recontact' mobile games series which is an unique
blend of cinema and mobile game.

She is an executive board member of OYUNDER, which is a non-profit association founded for the purpose of supporting and representing the Turkish
Game Industry as well as the founder of “Women in Games Turkey” that aims to incorporate the energy and creativity of women to this industry. She is also a new generation angel investor in the “Rising Tide Europe” focusing her resources to social impact and creative industries.

Simay featured as one of the most influential business women of Turkey by Startup Magazine 2019 and was chosen as one of the four women leaders of Turkey in the field of culture and arts by British Council 2018. She was also a finalist of the ‘Creative Impact Award’ of the year at MCV Women in Games Award in 2018.

Tara Reddy is CEO and Cofounder of Loveshark, a London-based studio making mobile camera games for Gen Z female players. Loveshark use Augmented Reality and Machine Learning technology to bring a new genre of games to life and capture shareable moments on video. Prior to Loveshark, Tara spent 6 years working as a veterinarian before undertaking her MBA from London Business School. She then spent 2 years at Blippar - one of the global leaders in AR - before co-founding Loveshark.

Toni Brasting is a Strategic Design & Innovation Manager in the Public Engagement team at Wellcome, where Toni helps Wellcome teams put people at
the centre of research in particular Wellcome Priority Areas such as Snakebites, Data, Our Planet Our Health and Mental Health. She works with these teams to design new ways of engaging the public in order to create real change.

Toni has worked in a range of industries, mainly in the area of human centred design and programme development, including Video Games where she worked for Mike Bithell Games, 2K and the London Games Festival and worked with
Ninja Theory on the BAFTA award winning game, HellBlade: Senua’s Sacrifice in her capacity as Wellcome’s Games Development Manager.

Zoë Sams is a tools programmer at Rockstar North, and a board member for the Scottish Game Developers Association.
Her passion lies in combining art and code, with some of her favourite projects being real-time simulations, animation tools, character rigs, and interactive installations. In 2017, Zoë was selected as one of Develop’s 30 Under 30.
She is a strong believer that collaboration and diversity can only strengthen our industry and push us to continue creating fresh, innovative content.