Search Results

Angelo is an in-house attorney at Microsoft, but unlike the very exciting areas of work within the company like Microsoft Office, Windows, and Azure, Angelo toils daily in the Xbox mines, supporting their first-party game development studios. He currently provides legal support for 343 Industries (Halo), The Coalition (Gears of War), and Ninja Theory (Hellblade). With an engineering background and some experience as a software developer, he understands the technical aspects of game development (while also having enough self-knowledge to acknowledge that he no longer has the coding chops to do it himself), and spends what free time he has left after raising his two young children playing whatever games he can get his hands on (while justifying it to himself as market research). Prior to his role at Microsoft, Angelo has spent time in the legal departments of Google, Yahoo!, and Bandai Namco Entertainment America. Angelo frequently speaks about legal issues affecting the video game industry at legal conferences as well as game industry events such as GDC, PAX, TwitchCon, and SXSW.

Uthappa is the lead architect on the Microsoft Azure Gaming team that supports some of our most prominent gaming customers and partners. He specializes in enabling Azure cloud solutions for business-critical gaming workloads, whether they involve developing games on the cloud, using AI for game development, or hosting dedicated servers to reach millions of players worldwide.

Patrick Mendenall is a lifelong gamer and 20-year gaming industry veteran, with leadership experience spanning Xbox and Azure before joining Arm. At Arm, he focuses on advancing adoption of Arm technologies with strategic gaming partners across mobile, PC, and cloud platforms. Patrick works closely with studios and engine developers to unlock performance, efficiency, and next-generation capabilities that power exceptional gaming experiences worldwide.

Cheryl Platz is an internationally renowned interaction designer, author, and actress best known for her work on cutting-edge games, products and platforms including Amazon's Alexa, the Echo Look, the Sims family of games, the Riot Games platform and 2XKO, Marvel Strike Force, and Microsoft's Azure platform. She is the host of Enduring Play: A Game Development Podcast and author of The Game Development Strategy Guide: Crafting Modern Video Games That Thrive (Rosenfeld Media, 2025). She is currently Creative Director for the Game Studio at The Pokémon Company International, focused on Pokémon TCG Live - past employers include Riot Games, Scopely, Electronic Arts/Maxis, Amaze Entertainment/Griptonite Games, Microsoft, Amazon, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Cheryl is also a repeat adjunct faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University's Masters of Entertainment Industry Management program, teaching the craft of video game design and production. Cheryl's first book, "Design Beyond Devices: Creating Multimodal, Cross-Device Experiences" (Rosenfeld Media, 2020), is the design manual for technologists who aspire to get a little bit closer to the starship bridge of their dreams – or just build better responsive websites, games, and cross-channel experiences.

Mithuna Srinivasan, Engineering Lead, Valorem Reply Mithuna is an Engineering Manager at Valorem Reply, where she leads the company's engineering practice and guides technical teams in building large‑scale cloud and AI solutions for enterprise clients. With deep experience in system design, Azure architecture, and applied GenAI, she focuses on helping organizations adopt new technologies in ways that strengthen performance and unlock new capabilities. She brings more than 15 years of hands-on engineering and technical leadership experience across cloud platforms and modern application development. Her background includes leading development for Xbox and Windows experiences, architecting high‑availability cloud solutions, and mentoring engineering teams through complex delivery cycles. At Valorem Reply, she recently leads rollout and optimization of AI tooling and practices, enabling teams to integrate Azure OpenAI, LLM-driven automation, and secure AI workflows into daily development. Her work centers on building practical, scalable AI systems that teams can trust in production. At this year's conference, she will demo Valorem Reply's agentic gaming solution built on Azure Foundry and share how AI‑powered agents can help studios accelerate development, experiment faster, and bring new player experiences to life.

I am the Head of Growth at Photon Engine, focusing on Gaming Developers and Founders. We are the leading multiplayer gaming service for online developers reaching over 1.4B players monthly. Previously, I led Microsoft Azure PlayFab engagement initiatives for game developers and publishers. This role was a continuation of Microsoft's 2018 acquisition of PlayFab, the live game operations and game services cloud for games that I grew in Europe and abroad as a general manager until the acquisition. I built studios for Unity Technologies and Ubisoft and mentored multiple gaming studios, which I love to do. Before joining the gaming industry, I produced and directed many projects for corporations, private and public organizations worldwide. Led departments and pushed the limits for U.N.E.S.C.O., Marketel McCann, Cossette, and others. Won multiple awards for interactive online projects, founded two more companies and worked on some of the most amazing experiences ever put on the web. I am passionate about creating innovations that augment interactions, blending business success with new technologies that enhance creativity.