Ernest Adams is a freelance game designer, writer, and teacher, working with the International Hobo Design Group. He has worked in the game industry since 1989, and has long been interested in issues related to women and gaming. Ernest was most recently employed as a lead designer at Bullfrog Productions on the Dungeon Keeper series, and for several years before that was the audio/video producer on the Madden NFL Football line for Electronic Arts. Ernest is also the founder and first chairman of the IGDA, and established as one of its major tasks the goal attracting more women to the industry.

Melissa Bachman-Wood is a Development Director at Electronic Arts. Since joining Maxis from outside the games industry shortly before it was acquired by EA in 1997, she has shipped numerous titles in the Sims franchise, including the original game, its sequel, and a long line of expansion packs. While the quirky whimsical nature of The Sims is the characteristic Melissa loves best about our games, she is passionate about creating development environments and processes that improve the games we make as well as the lives of those who make them. Being a game developer as well as a mother of two has given her a keen understanding of the challenges we face in balancing the needs of work and home, and given her two daughters a wonderfully warped sense of what “corporate work life” is like. Melissa is currently working on a new version of The Sims for our fans to enjoy in the years to come.

Ellen Guon Beeman has fifteen years of experience in designing, writing, and producing games. She began her games career as a project manager at Sierra, then joined Origin to write and direct games in the Wing Commander series. She has also held salaried positions at Electronics Arts and Monolith Productions. As a freelancer, she worked for Disney, Sega, Leapfrog, Mary-Margaret.com, and other companies. Prior to her games career, Ellen was a children's television writer, and has published four novels and several short stories. Ellen has been a speaker at the Game Developer Conference, SXSW Interactive, and other game industry events.

Lucy Bradshaw tells her kids that when she was young, she had to walk an 8 mile paper route through the harsh winter conditions of her home town of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Even at the young age of 10, she proved herself to have enough strength, focus, and creativity to get a difficult job done. These same qualities have helped her achieve success in her present position at Maxis.

As executive producer of The Sims 2, the fastest selling PC game of all time, Lucy oversaw the overall game design and played a major role in its unprecedented success. She encourages people to express creativity and enables ownership to the teams. Her experience at Activision, Lucas Arts, and Electronic Arts served as a launching pad when Lucy decided to join Maxis after it was acquired by EA in 1997.

Prior to working in the gaming industry, Lucy received a BA in psychology from the University of Michigan. She originally began working on SimCity 3000 and then worked on The Sims, SimCity 4, and The Sims 2. She is currently working hand in hand with Will Wright on Spore, which recently took home the 2006 Electronic Entertainment Expo awards of; Most Creative Game, Best PC Game and Best Simulation.

Brenda Brathwaite
Game Designer and Professor, Savannah College of Art & Design

As a 25-year veteran of the video games industry, Brenda Brathwaite is a game designer and Professor of game design at the Savannah College of Art & Design. She has worked on 21 published titles including the award-winning Wizardry series of role playing games and the award-winning Jagged Alliance series of strategy role-playing games, and continues to design games as a consultant for major publishers. Brenda is the founder and chair of the International Game Developers Association's Sex Special Interest Group and a passionate anti-censorship advocate. She is a regular speaker at universities and conferences, including the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2006 and 2005, the Game Developers Exchange (GDX) 2006, the Women in Games Conference (a part of the Austin Games Conference), The Guildhall at SMU and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology among others. She is an expert on sexual content in video games. Her book, Sex in Video Games, was released by Thomson Learning in 2006.

Jenna Chalmers is a game designer at Electronic Arts. She began working in gaming industry in 1997 with the publishing division of Psygnosis, a Sony studio. Jenna soon moved to the development side of gaming and in 1999 joined the Maxis studio. Since then, she has produced and designed games such as SimCity 3000 Unlimited, The Sims Online, The Sims 2, and four top selling expansion packs: The Sims House Party, Unleashed, Superstar, and Makin’ Magic. A frequent speaker and representative at industry events, Jenna has been interviewed for G4TechTV, MTV, and Good Morning America. She was a key presenter at the Regional Celebration of Women in Computing conference at UIUC. Jenna is now working as a game designer on Will Wright’s next game, Spore.

Her Interactive is the pioneer in interactive entertainment targeted toward female play preferences whose corporate mission is to lead the industry toward a new standard of intelligent interactive entertainment for girls. As the Marketing Producer for Her Interactive, Ms. Chiang is responsible for overseeing the successful and timely product launches of the company’s Nancy Drew games. She also manages the Her Interactive website and community message board, and is tasked with growing the Nancy Drew PC game community through online media, analysis of industry trends, and consumer research. Prior to joining Her Interactive, Ms. Chaing gained valuable marketing insight and skills through internships at such leading companies as Alaska Airlines, Experience Music Project, and Wizards of the Coast. She holds a Bachelors’ degree in Business with a concentration in Marketing, and a minor in Philosophy from the University of Washington.

Karen joined Linden Lab in 2005 after attending a "Breaking Into the Games Industry" event in Northern California. She serves as Development Program Manager for the online virtual world Second Life, bringing experience from the software industry where she held positions from Technical Support Engineer to Engineering Project Coordinator. Karen enjoys creating and refining development process and constantly strives to improve the Second Life experience through the production of high-quality software. Karen received her Bachelor's degree in Japanese from the University of Montana. A year studying abroad in Japan was a highlight of her educational career. Professional study of software design and programming languages re-ignited her second great love -- computers -- and she has been in the software industry ever since.

Don L. Daglow has served as president and CEO of Stormfront Studios since founding the company in 1988. Electronic Games has called him “one of the best-known and respected producers in the history of the field,” and in 2003 he received the CGE Award for “groundbreaking achievements that shaped the Video Game Industry.” Stormfront's major titles include the action-adventure Eragon (Xbox360, PS2, Xbox, PC; published by Sierra, based on the 20th Century Fox film) and The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (PS2/Xbox, published by EA, based on the film by Peter Jackson). Prior to founding Stormfront, Don served as director of Intellivision game development for Mattel, as a producer at Electronic Arts, and as head of the Entertainment and Education division at Broderbund. He designed and programmed the first-ever computer baseball game in 1971 (now recorded in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown), the first mainframe computer role-playing game (Dungeon for PDP-10 mainframes, 1975), the first sim game (Intellivision Utopia, 1981) and the first game to use multiple camera angles (Intellivision World Series Major League Baseball, 1983). Don co-designed Computer Game Hall of Fame title Earl Weaver Baseball (1987) and the first massively multiplayer online graphic adventure, the original Neverwinter Nights for AOL (1991-97). In 2003 he was elected to the Board of Directors of the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences. He also is a past winner of the National Endowment for the Humanities New Voices playwriting competition. Don holds a BA in Writing from Pomona College and an Ed.M. from Claremont Graduate University.

Jill Donald has been with EA for seven years and currently serves as the Development Director at EALA on the team collaborating with Academy Award® winner Steven Spielberg. In this role, Jill is responsible for all team logistics including planning high-level strategies for product execution and managing all aspects of team processes and production schedules. Prior to this role, Jill was the Design Development Director on The Lord of the Rings, The Battle for Middle-earth I and the Development Director on The Lord of the Rings, The Battle for Middle-earth II and its expansion pack, The Rise of the Witch-king. Jill began her career in the gaming industry at EA’s Maxis studio in 1999 working as the Executive Assistant to the Chief Operations Officer. In 2000 she moved into development as an Assistant Producer on the Supercross team within the EA SPORTS division and later on the EA SPORTS BIG title Freekstyle. In 2002, Jill transferred to EA Pacific in Irvine where she worked as an Associate Producer on the Command & Conquer series and ultimately landed at EALA in 2003. Jill has a Bachelor of Science degree in psychology from Carnegie Mellon University.

Jesyca Durchin is the founder of Nena Media, Inc., a leading developer of interactive and filmed entertainment for girls since 2000. As a producer, Jesyca has created and produced games, films and rides for leading brands such as Mattel Entertainment, Buena Vista Games, Walt Disney Imagineering, Walt Disney Home Video and Mattel Interactive. She has also recently consulted with LimeLife, Inc., the only global publisher of mobile game and content downloads focused exclusively on the women's market. Jesyca has been working in the interactive business since 1994. Some of her interactive titles include, Eco East Africa (1995 Four Star Award of Excellence from Home PC Magazine) and Barbie Fashion Designer (Fastest selling children's CD-ROM title in 1996, inclusion in the Smithsonian Institution's Permanent Research Collection in 1998). She has also led the production of six feature length animated Barbie DVD movies which have sold more than 25 million units world wide. Jesyca has a degree in Business Management and Media from Loyola Marymount University and the spelling of her first name is not her doing.

Lisa Farina
Operations Manager, Trion World Network

Lisa Farina started working in the games industry in 1994. She worked for such companies as New World Computing, Sony Online Entertainment, and Kronos Digital Entertainment. She did design work for titles in the Might and Magic role-playing series as well as the Heroes of Might and Magic strategy games. She also did content game design for Star Wars Galaxies. Currently, she is serving as an Operations Manager at Trion World Network, Inc. in Redwood City, California.

As group vice president of consumer marketing, Carolyn Feinstein is responsible for the management of all consumer marketing activities for Electronic Arts in North America. Leading a dynamic team of creative marketers and the largest advertising budget of any independent videogame publisher in the world, she is responsible for all of EA’s Advertising, Campaign Management, Entertainment Marketing, Sports Marketing, Lifestyle Marketing, Consumer Research, Design, and Creative Services in North America. Prior to her current position, Feinstein was the director of sports marketing for key EA SPORTS franchises including: Madden Football, NCAA Football, Knockout Kings, NASCAR, Supercross and Formula 1. In this role her responsibility included driving the brand marketing strategy for key EA SPORTS titles and managing the launches of these franchises. Feinstein joined EA as the Director of Consumer Promotions, with responsibility for creating partnership-marketing opportunities to drive trial, awareness, and incremental media value for EA’s packaged goods business. Prior to joining EA she spent six years in Brand Management and Sports/Entertainment marketing at E. & J. Gallo Winery. Feinstein received a B.S. degree from Union College and a M.B.A. from Kenan Flagler at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Margaret has been with Electronic Arts for 15 years, working on multiple well-known titles including Road Rash, Soviet and Nuclear Strike, Rumble Racing, Majestic, The Lord of The Rings (LOTR: The Third Age was one of the first games nominated for an award by the Visual Effects Society), and most recently The Godfather. She came to the games industry after a stint with various advertising and educational/multimedia companies.

Sr. Game Designer/Author

Sheri Graner Ray is author of the book, “Gender Inclusive Game Design-Expanding the Market.” She has served as the co-chair for the Women in Game Development SIG of the IGDA for 4 years and has been a spokesperson for the female game player for many years. In 2004 she was the Chair of the Women’s Game Conference, the first game conference to specifically address the issues of women and games held in the U.S. Sheri has served as a design consultant to Cartoon Network and as Sr. Game Designer with Sony Online Entertainment. Before coming to Sony, she served as President of her own studio, Sirenia Software, and before that as Director of Product Development for Her Interactive, where she began her research into females and computer games. She has also worked for Origin Systems as a writer and designer on the Ultima PC series.

Mary Beth Haggerty is a Development Director at Electronic Arts. She has worked on 10 titles including the Sims 2 base game and many Expansion packs. Before coming to EA, Mary Beth worked at ILM contributing to 10 feature films and 23 commercials. When she is not shipping 5 products a year, she enjoys the food and wine culture of San Francisco and loves to travel.

Honey Hamilton is the Public Relations Coordinator for the Events and Media team at EA. She joined Electronic Arts after being a T.A. for a summer video game design class and female scholarship mentor at the University of Southern California. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Communication with an emphasis in entertainment and society from the USC. Honey has been a fan of video games ever since she convinced her parents that Super Mario Brothers wasn’t too violent.

Sally Huang began her career at EA as a new college graduate from Cornell University. During her time at school, she served as a teaching assistant for Cornell’s Intro to Game Design and Computer Animation classes. Her internship credits include environment art for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and tools development for The Godfather and James Bond: From Russia with Love. She is currently a technical artist for the Sims Wii.

Robin Hunicke is a Lead Designer within EA’s Sims Division. She joined EA in October of 2005, to work on The Sims 2: Open For Business. Prior to that, she was finishing up her PhD in Computer Science at Northwestern University, in Chicago, IL (almost done!). In her copious free time, she does some academic/developer outreach, speaking on games and education, helping out at the IGDA, and teaching at GDC. Her first love was M.U.L.E. She is currently focused on bringing The Sims franchise to new platforms.

From the mean streets of Utah to the serene calmitude of West Oakland, Ashley Jenkins remains a video game industry professional. She currently works as a community manager for Ubisoft, facilitating the desires of the gaming community, acting as liaison between the company and gamers and helps monitor forums and community activity. Jenkins, better known to the online and gamer community as “Jinx,” is also a member of Ubisoft’s Frag Dolls, the professional video game team. She has taken on the role of producer for the Frag Dolls video game Podcasts, which include interviews and editorials about the industry.

Jenkins began working as an in-game journalist for the Massively Multiplayer Online game, Shadowbane, where she wrote regular articles on events and the political state of the virtual world. She has been a long-time video game player and fan and loves action, adventure and RPG titles.

Jennifer Lane is a producer with EA’s Sims Division. She joined the game industry in 2001, working with Westwood Studios and Electronic Arts on Earth & Beyond, and subsequently the Ultima Online franchise. She began her career as a community coordinator specializing in designing large-scale events and moved into design and lead design roles before joining the production side of game development.

Prior to joining the game industry, Jennifer was a research scientist focused in Molecular Biology. In her spare time, Jennifer participates in educational projects encouraging young women interested in entering the video game and other technical industries.

Jen’s responsibilities as General Manager, Games at Comcast include management of all games products, strategy, and business development for the United States' largest cable company.

Jen has had a long and varied career in online content. After beginning her career at Microprose Software in 1992, she joined AOL in 1996; during her tenure at AOL, she held numerous positions in the AOL brand programming division, including Programming Director for the Games Channel.

Jen is a frequent speaker at interactive entertainment industry events, and has earned a BA in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins University and an MBA with a concentration in International Business from the Columbia Business School. Jen was named one of the “Game Industry’s 100 Most Influential Women” by Next Generation.

Deborah Mars joined Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) in 2002, and is currently a Producer in their Santa Monica studios where she works with External Development teams to envision and create innovative, compelling and fun next-gen products. Despite being a relative newcomer to the videogame industry, Deborah brings with her more than 15 years experience in Product Development, with an extensive background in new media, new business start-ups, and management consulting. She has held positions at Scient Corporation, The Tribune Company, and Encyclopaedia Britannica, where back in the early 1990's, she helped to pioneer the development of one of the most successful consumer products of its time, Compton's Interactive Encyclopaedia. Mars holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan and certification in project management from the International Institute for Learning Inc., a charter member of the Project Management Institute.

Molly McAfee works for Electronic Arts University, managing leadership development programs for studios Worldwide. Her inspiration for working in this field is the challenge of elevating human and group potential. Molly is constantly seeking ways to raise her and other's creativity, and connecting individuals and groups. She is passionate about Women's Leadership, and has completed extensive work with a local Women's Leadership collaboration. Originally from Atlanta, Georgia she now proudly calls San Francisco her home.

McCreary manages a global team and leads the development of the first formal University Relations program for EA, partners with academia on engineering and game design curriculum recommendations, and is building a process for finding, recruiting, and retaining new college graduate and intern talent around the world.

Prior to her role at EA, McCreary was a senior technical recruiter for six years on the Microsoft College Recruiting team where she built the first college recruiting program across all of Microsoft’s US field offices and partnered with over 50 universities. McCreary holds a Bachelors degree in communications from Boston University and a Masters degree in Higher Education Administration from Columbia University, where she focused her thesis work on the retention of women in engineering and computer science programs.

Tamir Nadav is a Game Designer, formerly programmer, and a graduate of Full Sail in 2005. He has been involved in the industry for over 5 years with his enthusiastic networking abilities, and can be seen at many different events and schools, assisting current students in preparing to enter the industry. His role in WIGI is to try and prepare as many prospective game developers as possible to bring them into the industry.

As a Senior Global Brand Manager, Laura Naviaux brings nearly a decade of marketing experience to the industry. At Sony Online Entertainment Ms. Naviaux is responsible for brand marketing on various titles including EverQuest II and Vanguard. Ms. Naviaux leads a global brand team responsible for brand/IP development, advertising, media buying, packaging, promotions, community outreach, online marketing and Web presence. Ms. Naviaux has spearheaded online viral initiatives, national cinema campaigns, pre-order programs, and developed overseas brand presence throughout Europe, Asia and Russia.

Ms. Naviaux started her career at 989 Studios, a division of Sony Computer Entertainment America, assisting media relations and promotions for the Cool Boarders series, the Twisted Metal series, and the 989 Sports line. Prior to joining SOE Ms. Naviaux worked as a Brand Manager at THQ Inc., the third largest independent publisher, marketing the company’s internally developed video games including Red Faction, motocross and various children’s games.

Cindy Nicola is the Sr. Director of Global Talent Acquisition at EA. She joined EA in April 2001. Having worked as a strategic HR business partner, she has proven skills in global staffing and resourcing, organization and leadership development, rewards and recognition, compensation, change management and TQM with demonstrated influence in other functional areas. Prior to EA, Cindy held positions with Avery Dennison. She joined Avery in 1998 as the head of HR at Avery’s largest labels manufacturing plant in Milford, MA. She was subsequently promoted to Sr. Staffing Manager at Avery’s headquarters in Southern California. Prior, to Avery Dennison, Cindy held multiple HR roles at the A.W. Chesterton Company. In her last role at AWC, in the mid-to-late 90’s, Cindy headed up the quality function where she had responsibility for HR, TQM and a rigorous ISO 9001 program. Building on over 15 years of experience and significant contributions at both the corporate and divisional levels, Cindy's recent charter at EA, has been to provide visionary leadership, passion and creativity in building a talent engine. She has leveraged non-traditional models, processes, and tools to attract, recruit, and retain the highest quality talent. Cindy has global responsibility for recruiting, including University Relations, talent technology, and programs. She has spent the last year building relationships across the globe to optimize talent acquisition at EA. In 2002, she was named as one of the top 100 Recruiting professionals on Recruiter.com. Cindy holds an MS degree in Social Work, with a sub-concentration in management, from Boston University and a BA in Human Studies (Psychology Major/Sociology Minor from Bradford College.

Sondra Norris, EA’s Management Trainer since May 2003 joined the company from Outside the Lines where she was a the Principle proprietor. The company, formed in 1997, was dedicated to designing and delivering customized, high impact human resource development solutions specializing in management and leadership, influence, communication, career development, selection and hiring, presentation skills. Sondra has enjoyed a diverse career in fields ranging from Norris Home Loans where she was a Broker/Partner to the San Francisco Flea Market where she was Director of Special Operations and Cadence Design Systems, Inc. where she was a Training Specialist 1995-1997. She also spent five years at Raychem Corporation as a Development Specialist. Sondra is a graduate of California State University, Chico.

Emily Ong's passion for gaming started at the mere age of six when her dad brought home the Intellivision II console system. Ong took her interests in computers to the University of California, San Diego where she double majored in Computer Science as well as Mathematics Applied Science. An original member of the Frag Dolls, she was recruited when a friend referred her to Ubisoft's job posting seeking out female gamers. At the time, she had been working in the Silicon Valley for various tech and gaming companies and thought, "Why not?" and quickly applied for the position. As part of the team, she is known as “Seppuku” and is a deadly combination of quick, smart and ninja-like stealth. Since joining, she has had the privilege to participate in many team tournaments, which include placing first at the PAX 2004 Rainbow Six: Black Arrow tournament, first at the PAX 2005 Ghost Recon 2: Summit Strike tournament, and first at the most Rainbow Six Vegas tournament at CPL 2006 in Dallas.

Lyndsay Pearson is the Lead Producer on The Sims 2 PC Expansion Pack team. She has been with EA since 2002 and has contributed to numerous The Sims and The Sims 2 titles. A 2002 Graduate of Cogswell Polytechnical College, Pearson has a background in Modeling and Animation.

BZ Petroff joined Lucasfilm Ltd. in October 2006 to become the Director of Talent Acquisition for all the Lucas Companies. She is currently managing recruiting for Lucasarts, Industrial Light and Magic, Lucasfilm, Lucas Animation and Lucas Animation Singapore. In her former position, as Head of Production for W!LDBRAIN Animation Studios, she led the effort in creating overseas animation opportunities for the hit pre-school television series Higglytown Heroes and managed W!LDBRAIN’s San Francisco based production operations. Prior to that, she was a Production Supervisor at Pixar Animation Studios and worked on Toy Story and A Bug’s Life. In addition to that, BZ had a lengthy career in live action filmmaking including feature films, commercials, music videos and documentaries before getting involved in 3D content creation.

With over eight years of experience in the game industry from the trenches to the convention floor Sheri Pocilujko brings her unique background and talents to both game development and business operations. An avid gamer herself, she plays all types from board, card, and paper role-playing to PC, massive-multiplayer, and console games. While a volunteer for a collectible card game company Sheri formed Matriarchal Society, a co-ed community whose goals were to help other volunteers increase their female player base and to help those females who were already players. An outspoken member of the industry she has presented at many conferences, universities, and industry events on various aspects of game development as well as being featured on G4 and industry-related websites. Sheri's thirst for knowledge has also led her to become an active IGDA member participating in the Casual Games, Human Resources, Production, Online Games, Women in Game Development, and Writer's SIGs, Quality of Life Committee, co-founder of the Sexuality in Games SIG, and co-founder and current chair of the Quality Assurance SIG. She currently sits on several program committees for various industry conferences and continues to work on creating more resources for the development community.

Morgan Romine works as a community manager at Ubisoft where she played an integral role on launching Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and is currently working on titles like And1 Street Ball and Splinter Cell: Double Agent. Romine interacts directly with Ubisoft’s core video game audience through the message boards, organizes online events such as contests and chats, and serves as a communication hub between the gaming communities and dev teams. Romine helped found and build Ubisoft’s all-girl gaming team, the Frag Dolls and as captain of the team, she serves as spokesperson, gamer, road manager, and liaison between the team and Ubisoft.

Examining gaming from an academic standpoint, Romine coordinated and led a class at Berkeley about the “anthropology of online gaming communities” during the 2002-2003 school year. The lesson plan was based on extensive research into psychological, sociological and demographic studies. She used her personal experience with MMORPGs like EverQuest, Star Wars Galaxies, Lineage, and Dark Age of Camelot to engage the class in discussions about this unique and growing social world.

With over 12 years of experience building online communities, Caryl most recently managed the websites for The Sims and Simcity before creating and launching the website for The Sims 2. Her current project is Spore, where she is the Pollinated Content Producer - designing and developing the ingame, behind-the-scenes content sharing features. Prior to working at Maxis, Caryl was on the launch team for PlanetOut and then worked at HotWired - the online arm of Wired Magazine.

Working with communities that center around content creation has shown Caryl that given the chance users will make creative choices that push the original game design into new and interesting directions. And that game developers can apply the learnings from those emergent behaviors to make better games.

Ms. Smith was named General Manager of The Sims Franchise in September 2005. Prior to this position she served as Executive Vice President and General Manager, North American Publishing since March 1998. Prior to this, she served as Executive Vice President, North American Sales since October 1996. She previously held the position of Senior Vice President of North American Sales and Distribution from July 1993 to October 1996 and as Vice President of Sales from 1988 to 1993. Nancy has served as Western Regional Sales Manager and National Sales Manager since she joined Electronic Arts in 1984. Nancy holds a B.S. degree in management and organizational behavior from the University of San Francisco.

Mary Welsh
GDirector, Talent Acquisition, Electronic Arts

Mary K. Welsh, Director, Talent Acquisition is a key part of EA’s in-house recruiting team. Mary leads a team to execute hiring strategy for North American Studios. Prior to EA, she was a Senior Staffing Manager for Cisco Systems. Mary is also a single mother of two and has successfully balanced the demands of work and home.