GDC 2024 Session Viewer

Kinross, Austin

Title: PIX Developer Lead

Company: Microsoft

Lewis, James

Title: Sr. Business Development Manager

Company: Microsoft

Ventura, Sara M.E.

Title: Senior Producer / Neurodiversity ERG Global Lead

Company: Zynga

Sara M.E. Ventura (She/Her) is a Senior Producer at Zynga passionate about spreading knowledge, uplifting diverse voices, and prioritizing accessibility. She also leads the Neurodiversity at Zynga employee resource group and co-leads zPride's LGBTQIA2S+ Learning & Development Committee. In her 9 years of games industry experience, she's worked as a Producer at Microsoft, Mobile Writer/Editor at Nintendo, Partner Marketing Digital Sales Ops. Associate at Ubisoft, and writer/consultant on various indie games. Additionally, Sara has taught for the University of Washington's Game Design program, worked as a freelance digital illustrator, and voice acted in games and advertisements.

Austin, John

Title: Founder

Company: Pontoco

John Austin is a game developer living in Seattle, Washington and the co-founder of Pontoco. He has been making games for nearly 18 years and in the past has worked at Google Brain, Funomena, Microsoft, and others. He currently directs projects at Pontoco, seeking to build thoughtful experiences that enrich the lives of people across the world.

Baier-Lentz, Moritz

Title: Partner, Head of Gaming

Company: Lightspeed Venture Partners

Moritz Baier-Lentz is a Partner and the Head of Gaming at Lightspeed, a globally leading venture capital firm with over $29 billion in capital under management and more than 500 investments across the U.S., Europe, and Asia—including Epic Games, Stability AI, and Snap. Moritz loves to partner with exceptional entrepreneurs and has invested over $100 million into the gaming industry—including founders who have led the creation of games like Fortnite, Call of Duty, League of Legends, Wild Rift, Apex Legends, Overwatch, Valorant, StarCraft II, and Warcraft III. Previously, Moritz was a partner and management team member at BITKRAFT. He personally raised over $200 million and, with the founders, scaled the firm to become the most active gaming investor of 2020, 2021, and 2022. Moritz led many of the funds’ marquee early-stage deals, including Inworld AI, Theorycraft Games, and Raid Base—achieving top-decile IRR (collective valuations over $2 billion) and attracting 9-figure follow-on investments from Amazon, Disney, Epic Games, Google, Intel, Meta, Microsoft, NetEase, Niantic, Nintendo, Riot Games, Sony, Take-Two, Tencent, and Ubisoft. Before joining BITKRAFT, Moritz was a Vice President at Goldman Sachs, where he founded and led the firm's global gaming practice. During his 5-year tenure, he advised the world's largest gaming and technology corporations on over $300 billion in transaction volume across M&A, IPOs, VC, and other strategic transactions—including Dell’s $67 billion acquisition of EMC and IBM’s $34 billion Red Hat purchase. A lifelong gamer, Moritz spent his teenage years competitively playing Blizzard’s Diablo II, culminating in a global #1 ranking among over 12 million players in 2003. The first person in his family to graduate high school, he traded the digital swords and armor that he earned in-game to afford his college tuition—two decades before NFTs entered the mainstream. Moritz holds an M.B.A. and M.A. from Stanford, where he graduated as Arjay Miller Scholar and ERP Scholar ("German Rhodes"). He was recognized among the "30 Under 30" (Forbes), "40 Under 40" (Capital), "Young Leaders" (Atlantik-Brücke), and "Young Global Leaders" (World Economic Forum). His recent speaking engagements include Harvard, Stanford, M.I.T., Goldman Sachs, Forbes, New York Times, SXSW, and GDC. In his personal time, Moritz is an avid Ironman and ultramarathon athlete, including the 250km Marathon des Sables and the World Marathon Challenge (7 marathons on 7 continents in 7 days). With his races, he has raised over $250,000 for depression research.

Baldwin, Elise

Title: Senior Audio Lead

Company: Netflix Games

Elise Baldwin has been fortunate to work in game audio for more than 20 years. She is currently employed as a Senior Audio Lead within the Games group at Netflix Inc. Prior to that, she had been an audio director on the Publishing team at Xbox, where she collaborated closely with external studios to develop first-party games for the Xbox platform. She also served as a lead of the diversity and inclusivity team for the studio and co-led the Game Audio @Microsoft group for three years. Elise worked at Electronic Arts for over a decade, mainly as an Audio Director within the Sims division. While there, she contributed quality audio experiences on over a dozen games, and directed audio for the MySims franchise and Sims Medieval among other award-winning titles. In addition to creating, directing, mixing and authoring content, she was a senior team leader and a core contributor to audio development and pipeline innovations. With a background in film, experimental music and sound design, Elise is extremely passionate about creating entry points for women and LGBTQIA+ folks in the fields of audio production and interactive media.

Book-Larsson, Bjorn

Title: VP, Creator Platform

Company: Epic Games

Bjorn Book-Larsson is the Vice President of Creator Platform at Epic. He has created game platforms and games for 25 years, dating back to the first commercial casual skill gaming platform “SkillJam” used by Microsoft, AOL and Real Networks in the very early days of the internet, before working on AAA games for PC and Xbox, like Hawken and All Points Bulletin: Reloaded. Most recently Bjorn was the VP of Product for Avatars at Roblox, and prior to that the VP of Product at HTC Vive building AR/VR software platforms.

Brown, iAsia

Title: Senior Producer

Company: Xbox Game Studios Publishing

iAsia, also known as "Tech Picasso" and Senior Producer at Xbox, loved her 16-year military career, with four years in the U.S. Air Force and 12 years in the U.S. Marine Corps. At Microsoft, she champions military veterans and the LGBTQIA+ community, drawing on her prior combat experience. Her passions include art, gaming, film, bodybuilding, aqua scaping and documentary filmmaking. Brown's journey showcases resilience and creativity, bridging military service with technological innovation.

Brown, Cameron

Title: CCO

Company: Rec Room Inc

Cameron Brown is CCO and co-founder of Rec Room, the groundbreaking cross-platform social app. A thirty year veteran of the game industry, Cameron has shipped dozens of titles on platforms ranging from Gameboy Classic to Meta Quest. Before Rec Room, he got his start at Beam Software in Melbourne, Austrlia. Then spent a decade at Pandemic Studios in Los Angeles. Moved to Seattle to join Microsoft's HoloLens AR R&D group. Left in 2016 to co-found Rec Room and now here we are!ear

Coon, Jason

Title: Director of Xbox Safety Operations

Company: Xbox/Microsoft

Jason is a 22-year veteran of Microsoft where he leads Safety Operations for the Xbox online gaming service. Jason manages Xbox player safety policy, implementation of corporate and legal compliance regarding player conduct, and supervises operational teams responsible for enforcement of policy, appeals, investigations and escalations to law enforcement. Prior to Xbox, Jason served 12 years on active duty in the U.S. Army, rose to rank of Captain in the Signal Corps, holding roles of Chief of Computer Operations at NATO’s European Combat Simulation Center and Executive Officer for U.S. Army Space Command, Europe. Jason is a graduate of the United States Military Academy, West Point, NY and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science.

Cutting, Adele

Title: Director/Founder

Company: Soundcuts Ltd

Adele Cutting is a BAFTA award-winning audio professional with 20+ years’ experience in directing actors, audio direction, designing sound, music editing and casting and covering 'all things audio' across games, TV, installations, mobile, VR and Audio Drama. In 2011, Adele founded audio production company Soundcuts Ltd, winners of both Develop and TIGA awards. Soundcuts work with clients across the UK and Worldwide examples include: Supermassive Games, Netflix, Nickelodeon, Stellar Entertainment, Interior Night, Fireproof Games and Microsoft. Before Soundcuts, Adele trained at the NFTS and worked briefly in film before spending15 years at EA, working her way up the ranks to Senior Audio Director, working on blockbuster titles plus well known cult classics: the Harry Potter series, Populous the Beginning and Theme Park World. Adele is on the GDC Advisory Board and a co-opted member of the BAFTA Games Committee, she regularly sits on juries for various sound awards (BAFTA, MAS and the Game Audio Network Guild), talks at Universities and Game Industry events and has contributed to various books on audio published by focal press

Denton, Greg

Title: Principal Product Manager, Microsoft PlayFab

Company: Microsoft

Greg Denton has worked at Microsoft since 2020, and is currently Principal Product Manager at XBOX. Prior to joining XBOX he worked as a software engineer in visual effects and animation building art tools and pipelines.

Emtman, Kyle

Title: Head of Production, Turn 10

Company: Microsoft

Fan, Zoey

Title: Senior Product Manager, Flutter

Company: Google

Zoey Fan is a Senior Product Manager at Google. She leads monetization for Flutter. Her goal is to help developers to create and monetize their applications so they can build a successful business with Flutter. Zoey joined Google in 2019, working from Google’s office in Mountain View. Before Google, she worked at Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple. Zoey got her Bachelor's degree in Economics from Syracuse University and her Master’s in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania.

Figueiredo, Carlos

Title: Director of Player Safety

Company: Microsoft

Fisher, Sharon

Title: Head of Trust & Safety

Company: Keywords Studios

Sharon Fisher is a Trust & Safety veteran with over 15 years of experience in the gaming and social platform industries. She got her start as a moderator for the popular children's MMO Club Penguin, which was acquired by Disney in 2007. She held several roles at Disney until 2016, when she joined Two Hat by Microsoft, a moderation software company. She founded Real Game Consulting in 2020 to help platforms create and maintain positive community interactions. Today, Sharon leads the Trust & Safety team at Keywords Studios, where she oversees a team of 15+ strategists and 300+ “superhero” moderators. The unit has established itself as an industry leader by prioritizing superhero wellbeing and optimizing workflows through their AI + HI approach.

Gao, Jane

Title: Senior Director of Product Marketing

Company: Tencent Cloud

Jane has spent more than a decade working in the enterprise B2B technology and public cloud industry, Before joining Tencent Cloud, Jane held various product marketing leadership roles at Microsoft, Expedia, and American Express.

Gardiner, Monet

Title: Dialogue Designer

Company: Sony Interactive Entertainment PlayStation

Monet Gardiner is a Sound Designer with 10+ years of experience in video games, film, television, music, and multimedia. As a Sound Design graduate from Savannah College of Art and Design, Monet has worked with 343 Industries at Microsoft on Halo Infinite and Electronic Arts on NBA Live 19 and NBA Live 20. Noteworthy achievements include Production Mixer & Supervisor on Emmy award-winning live sitcom “The BUZZ”, multiple MPSE Golden Reel Nominations for Sound Editing, and Dialogue Designer on 2023 BAFTA Best Audio and EE Game of the Year “God of War:Ragnarok”. Recently in addition to her work on God of War: Ragnarok, Monet has been working on titles such as The Last of Us 2 Remastered and Death Stranding 2 as a Dialogue Designer with Sony Interactive Entertainment PlayStation. Monet's impact continues to reverberate through the industry through her commitment to giving back to the game audio community by fostering diversity and inclusion as a proactive board member of the Game Audio Diversity Alliance, a non-profit charity which aims to provide career advancement opportunities for underrepresented voices through education, mentoring, and financial support.

Hargreaves, Shawn

Title: Dev Manager, Direct 3D

Company: Microsoft

After a decade in the game industry, Shawn moved to Microsoft where he worked on the XNA Framework, Windows Phone, Win2D, and PIX on Windows. He’s been leading the Direct3D team for the last six years, through the releases of DXR and DirectX 12 Ultimate.

Harvey, Ivory

Title: Senior Technical Program Manager Gaming Trust and Safety

Company: Microsoft

Ivory Harvey works on building services and tools to help the Gaming and Entertainment industry create inclusive and safe communities for everyone. Ivory has been at Microsoft for almost 10 years, and has led various programs from the Xbox Ambassadors Program to Gaming Compliance, and recently finished her term as a co-lead of Women in Gaming, connecting the main theme of her career - when people feel welcome, safe, and part of a community, we all flourish.

Henderson, Jessica

Title: Principal Corporate Counsel for Gaming

Company: Microsoft

Jessica Henderson is currently Principal Corporate Counsel for Gaming at Microsoft (Xbox Game Studios). Jessica is the frontline product counsel for the Forza and Fable game franchises, and happily calls herself the “mini general counsel” for Turn 10 Studios, Playground Games, and Simplygon. Jessica additionally leads and manages music and talent licensing and engagement for all Xbox Game Studios and their games. Jessica has been instrumental in leading the global music licensing program for Xbox, including cultivating partnerships with performing rights organizations (PRO’s), music publishers, and record labels worldwide. Jessica focuses her practice on music, talent, and entertainment related transactions to secure the most strategic and innovative creative content for first party game studios, third party developers, and Xbox’s xCloud and Game Pass services. Prior to her stint at Xbox, Jessica worked in both the non-profit humanitarian and corporate sectors, including, International Mission Board, Sony Music Publishing, and LifePoint Health (HCA). Jessica is most passionate about cultivating her legal practice to create “safe spaces” for creativity/innovation to flourish and making the gaming industry the most inclusive creative economy in the world.

Kattera Chengappa, Uthappa

Title: Lead Cloud Solution Architect Gaming at Azure

Company: Microsoft

Uthappa is a TOGAF certified enterprise solutions architect with 22 years of experience in cloud architecture, infrastructure design, and digital transformation projects. He has consulted with over 30 Fortune-500 customers in various domains and helped them with their private/public cloud strategy and integration. He has expertise in multiple public and private cloud design and implementations - Microsoft Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, and other cloud platforms and services. Right now, Uthappa leads group of cloud architects focused on gaming solutions with our biggest and most strategic partners to design and deploy on Azure using rt foundational and industry best practices.  

Kefaloukos, Jon

Title: Strategic Account Director Gaming at Azure

Company: Microsoft

Jon Kefaloukos is a former professional gamer and Twitch streamer, and current Cloud Gaming Director at Microsoft. He started his career as a game developer working in QA, multiplayer design, and community management for the Gears of War franchise and went on to launch the gaming/esports program for Microsoft Stores worldwide. Currently, Jon helped launch the Azure Gaming vertical at Microsoft, leading strategic relationships with Microsoft's largest Gaming partners. 

Kelly, Alison

Title: Co-Founder & COO

Company: Bit Reactor

Alison Kelly brings a wealth of experience from the video game, entertainment, and technology industries, where she continues to establish strong connections and partnerships with leading global brands. Alison is currently the Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer at Bit Reactor, where she oversees day-to-day operations, guides strategic growth, and fosters the studio’s collaborative partnerships.

Before joining Bit Reactor, Alison served as Vice President of Media and Entertainment at FireID, a software security company. Throughout her time there, she forged relationships with prominent game development studios, publishers and media entities, including renowned brands like Valve Software, Activision Blizzard, Take-Two Interactive, LucasArts, Microsoft, SEGA, Disney and Universal Studios. In the technology and hardware space, Alison worked as the ISV Account Manager for Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), where she played a key role in guiding the roadmap for ATI’s GPU division offerings in the computer and video game industries. Her focus on building partnerships and facilitating growth made a significant impact on the success of their desktop business.

Beyond her professional roles, Alison is involved in advisory boards, including H.H. Sheikh Majid Bin Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum and INDEX Conferences & Exhibitions Dubai World Game Expo, as well as King Abdullah II’s Jordan Gaming Task Force. Alison is a graduate of the University of Utah.

Kinnunen, Kayla

Title: Executive Producer

Company: Mojang Studios

Kayla Kinnunen is an Executive Producer at Mojang Studios focusing on helping content creators express their creativity with Minecraft. Her 20+ year career in tech and gaming has given her an opportunity to work with incredibly talented individuals at companies that include Microsoft and Electronic Arts. She is particularly interested in empowering everyone to express themselves through the medium of gaming.

Kunes, Kim

Title: VP, Microsoft Gaming Trust & Safety

Company: Microsoft

Li, David

Title: Senior Product Manager, Visual Studio

Company: Microsoft

Mills-Perov, Jennifer

Title: Principal Product Manager Gaming Trust and Safety

Company: Microsoft

Jennifer Mills-Perov has been passionate about gaming ever since being addicted to Mega Bug on the TRS-80.  She has worked as a product leader in and out of the games industry since 2008, building and managing games and the platforms and services that surround them.  She's been with Microsoft since 2022, helping to build software that keeps online communities safe and welcoming for all players.

Mitchell, Ken

Title: Fellow

Company: AMD

Ken Mitchell is a Fellow and Technical Lead in the AMD Software Performance Engineering team where he collaborates with Microsoft® Windows® and AMD engineers to optimize AMD processors for better performance-per-watt. He began working at AMD in 2005. His previous work includes helping game developers utilize AMD processors efficiently, analyzing PC applications for performance projections of future AMD products, as well as developing system benchmarks. Ken earned a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science degree at the University of Texas at Austin.

Moon, Shayna

Title: Technical Producer

Company: Sanzaru

Shayna Moon is a Technical Producer at Meta's Sanzaru studio, recently shipping the critically acclaimed Asgard's Wrath 2. Her previous work includes Microsoft's The Coalition, the Unity DOTS Spotlight group, and cinematic and audio production on Sony Santa Monica’s God of War (2018) and God of War: Ragnarok (2022). She also has worked to support up and coming game developers through volunteer and mentoring opportunities such as Amplifying New Voices and the GDC Conference Associates program.Shayna graduated from Ferris State University in 2014 with a degree in Digital Animation and Game Design. She later attended the University of Texas at Austin Denius-Sams Gaming Academy, completing the program with honors. She began her career in games as a Quality Assurance tester in her home state of Michigan.

Kelly Murphy

Title: Lead Game Designer

Company: Avalanche Software

Kelly Murphy has worked in Game Development for 24 years, starting in QA with Acclaim Entertainment and eventually working his way into Game Design, initially with Microsoft Games. He has worked at Avalanche Software for 18+ years, with experience in game direction, narrative design, mechanics, systems, level and combat design for WB Games, castAR, Disney Interactive, Take-Two Interactive and Microsoft Games over his career. On Hogwarts Legacy, Kelly worked closely with the Game Director in aligning on overall game design and direction, communicating decisions outward throughout production. He created a visual means of communicating the overall structure and flow of the game to the team, comprising of 150+ missions, 20+ spells, over 4 seasons. Kelly likes to think he's a champion of a "player fantasy first" game design approach, much to the chagrin of his "systems first" teammates. He believes in primarily identifying not only the most desired fantasies players expect from a game, but also how best to serve and defend them, allowing the game to become what it will with this approach, warts and all.

Pajitnov, Alexey

Title: Creator of Tetris

Company: The Tetris Company

Alexey Pajitnov, originally from Moscow, became famous as a computer engineer and inventor of the legendary computer game Tetris, which he created in the 1980s while working for the Soviet Academy of Sciences. He has lived in the US since 1991, where he has been involved in the development of games such as Pandora's Box and worked with companies such as Microsoft and WildSnake Software. In addition to his iconic Tetris game, he is behind titles such as Hatris, El-Fish, and Hexic among many others that have deepened and expanded game design. He was awarded First Penguin Award at Game Developers Choice Awards in 2007 for his breakthrough in the world of games.

Panattoni, Jenn

Title: Head of Xbox Social Impact

Company: Xbox/Microsoft

Powers, Mathew

Title: Lecturer

Company: Indiana University Indianapolis

Mathew A. Powers is at home in worlds both real and virtual, teaching how to turn interests such as video and traditional analog gaming, sequential narratives, and creature design into careers. He helps students to develop skills in original personal creation; collaboration between diverse minds and talents; team-building as needed by all creative industries; business planning; and project prototyping. Focusing on 2-D and 3-D creation, virtual reality, and game world environment construction, exotic lifeforms for games and digital narratives, Powers’ classes explore character, environment, narrative, and game creation. On YouTube, he’s been a writer for the History of Video Games series on the popular Crash Course educational channel started by brothers Hank Green and John Green. Hosted by Andre Meadows, the 2016 series was inspired by Powers’ History of Video Games course at IUPUI. Head of Capstone development and presentations at Luddy Created Vectren game on gas and electrical safety Received MacArthur Foundation Grant for using the Spore game engine to teach Animal Classification for students in grades 5 and 6. Helped create the Return of Aetheria alternative reality game for Gen Con, Indy PopCon, and Indiana Comic Con. The public ARG logged more than 900 players during its 3-year existence. Five instructors and more than 100 students worked on the project. A gifted artist, Powers has created games and eLearning applications using Flash media development for Bloomington-based Option Six clients such as Microsoft, Eli Lilly, and Toyota.

Ritchie, Adam

Title: Senior Voice Designer

Company: Massive Entertainment - A Ubisoft Studio

Rouse III, Richard

Title: Studio Creative Director

Company: FarBridge

Richard Rouse III is a creative director, designer, writer and consultant who has worked on a range of titles from AAA to indie and everything in between. He is the Studio Creative Director at FarBridge currently working on dark new games. Past projects include The Suffering, State of Decay, Quantum Break, Drakan: The Ancients' Gates, Damage Incorporated, Odyssey: The Legend of Nemesis and his experimental stealth/narrative game The Church in the Darkness. Previously he was a Design Director/Lead at Microsoft Studios, Ubisoft Montreal, Midway and Surreal Software. Rouse wrote the popular book Game Design: Theory & Practice and is a frequent speaker on game design and interactive storytelling at conferences and universities.

Schafer, Tim

Title: Studio Head, Double Fine Productions

Company: Microsoft

Schmidt, Brian

Title: Founder

Company: GameSoundCon

Brian Schmidt is one of the early pioneers of the game audio industry. The 2008 recipient of the Game Audio Network Guild’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and 2017 inductee into the Pinball Expo Hall of Fame, Brian has been creating game music, sounds and cutting edge technology for more than 35 years. With a credit list of over 140 games and a client list including Electronic Arts, Zynga, Microsoft, Sony, Capcom, Sega, Data East, Namco and many others. Brian has used his combined expertise and experience in music composition, sound design and his deep technical knowledge to further the state of the art in game audio and his music has been featured in TV, Film and in the CD-set, Legends of Game Music.

Brian began his career in game audio in 1987 as a composer, sound effects designer and music programmer for Williams Electronic Games in Chicago writing music and creating sound effects for pinball machines and coin-operated video games. While there, he was the primary composer of the video game NARC. His main theme from NARC was later recorded and released by The Pixies. In 1989, Brian left Williams and became one of the industry’s first independent game composers, where he worked on such games as John Madden Football, the Desert Strike Series, Mutant League Football and the award winning Crueball. Other credits include Guns and Roses Pinball, where he worked closely with Slash to create a truly interactive Rock and Roll game experience.

In 1998, Brian was recruited by Microsoft to lead the direction of game audio technologies. While there, he joined the then-fledgling Xbox organization as the primary architect for its audio and music system. Brian has been credited with bringing Dolby Digital Surround Sound to interactive gaming through his efforts at Xbox (where he also created the original Xbox startup sound).Through his ten-year tenure at Microsoft, Brian continued to drive and advance game audio technologies through tools such the award-winning “XACT” (Xbox Audio Creation Tool); the first-of-its kind tool to provide interactive mixing for video games. Brian was also responsible for the overall audio system of the Xbox 360 game system, including the XMA audio compression format, winner of the G.A.N.G “Best New Technology award” and finalist in IGDA’s “Best new technology” category. Brian currently works as a consultant to the video game industry working with companies large and small.

Brian is the creator of GameSoundCon, the industry's largest conference dedicated to composing video game music and video game sound design. Brian is a frequent and in-demand speaker on game audio and game audio technologies, having given literally hundreds of educational and inspirational talks at events all over the world. Events such as the Game Developers Conference, Microsoft’s Gamefest, Sega Devcon, and the Audio Engineering Society Conference, SiGraph and esteemed institutions such as Yale University, Northwestern University and Digipen have invited Brian to share his knowledge and insight into the industry.

Brian received undergraduate degrees in music and computer science from Northwestern University in1985,where he created the first dual degree program between the School of Music and the Technological Institute. He went on to complete his Masters in Computer Applications in Music in 1987, where portions of his thesis work was published in the prestigious Computer Music Journal and presented by invitation to the AES special conference on Audio Technology.

Brian currently serves as President of the Game Audio Network Guild (G.A.N.G.), a position he was elected to in 2012, sits on the advisory board of the Game Developer Conference, is a former steering committee member of the Interactive Audio Special Interest Group (ia-sig) of the MMA, and has been a featured keynote speaker at GDC, Project BBQ and the Montreal Interactive Games Summit (MIGS).

Seropian, Alexander

Title: CEO

Company: Look North World

Alexander Seropian is an entrepreneur and video game developer who has been creating video games for more than 30 years. He is currently the founder and CEO of Look North World, a developer of games & entertainment for creator communities. Alex started in the video game industry by founding Bungie (Halo, Marathon, Myth). He is also the founder of Wideload Games and Industrial Toys. Alex has held executive positions at Microsoft, Disney, and Electronics Arts. Along with starting companies, he is the host of The Fourth Curtain Podcast, a mentor and advisor to numerous startups, and serves as a board advisor to the Tumo Center in Armenia.

Silkin, Alexander

Title: Founder & CTO

Company: Survios

Alex is a software engineer with an extensive background in consumer hardware, motion controls and software development; and his resume includes stints at NASA, Microsoft, and the Information Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California (USC). Alex has been working in VR since 2012 when he joined a USC student VR initiative “Project Holodeck” as the lead developer. This project developed an early roomscale prototype hardware and games. In 2013 he continued this effort commercially by founding the company Survios, where he serves the role of CTO. At Survios he has overseen the development and release of 7 VR titles, in addition to console and AR ports. Over the years, Alex's interests have gravitated towards player centric systems such as input, locomotion, UI and VR interaction.

Strunk, Oliver

Title: Partner Software Engineering

Company: Havok

Oliver Strunk is a world renowned physics engineer and self-proclaimed games physics engine enthusiast. Oliver's journey began in 1998 when he co-founded Ipion Physics, which merged with Havok in 2002, to create the Havok Physics engine.  In the role of the leading physics programmer, Oliver has been shaping the digital laws of motion for over 25 years. His contributions have been instrumental in enhancing the realism and interactivity of countless games and tech simulations, including in the area of Mixed Reality following the Microsoft acquisition of Havok in 2015. Currently, Oliver is Lead Physics Architect at Havok, where he continues to push the boundaries of what’s possible in the realm of physics-based simulations.

Tingvall, Jesper

Title: Simplygon Studios

Company: Microsoft

Tole, Katherine

Title: Voice Actor and Dialogue Editor

Company: Plant Based Audio

Katherine Tole is a "Kat of all trades": a professional voice actor, dialogue editor, audio engineer, and project manager. Specializing in video game audio, Kat is the kind of player that always maxes out their skill tree in-game and in real life. Recent voice acting credits include the games Roundguard, Republic of Jungle, Nova Island, Legend of Keepers, and corporate clients like Amazon, Microsoft, Harvard, and HTC. Recent dialogue editing credits include Jackbox Games for Party Pack 10 and Everbloom Games for the D&D Minecraft Map. They identify as non-binary and are part of the LGBTQ+ community.

Williams, CJ

Title: Director of Product Management Microsoft Game Creator Services

Company: Microsoft

CJ Williams is the Director of Product Management for Microsoft’s Game Creator Services.  He has worked at Microsoft for 23 years working in a number of divisions like Windows, Bing, Azure, Microsoft Research.  The last 7 years, he has been building game services for both Microsoft Game Studios and 3rd party game studios who use PlayFab.   

Wright, Katy Jo

Title: Senior Director, Xbox: Gaming For Everyone Sustainability Microsoft

Company: Microsoft

Katy Jo Wright is Senior Director, Xbox: Gaming For Everyone & Sustainability. In this role, she drives Team Xbox’s ultimate business objective: making gaming fun for everyone across the planet. Additionally, Katy Jo oversees Xbox’s role in Sustainability: making data-driven decisions, to ensure Xbox is minimizing its carbon footprint.  

Prior to joining Xbox nine years ago, Katy Jo worked for 15 years in a variety of high impact roles across Microsoft optimizing for customer experiences, scaling solutions, and creating tools that result in meaningful customer experiences.  

 A passionate advocate for Intentional Leadership, Katy Jo lives by her Gaming For Everyone team’s Core Principle: “If you don’t intentionally include, you unintentionally exclude.

Yu, Nathan

Title: Director of Product

Company: Inworld AI

Nathan is the Director of Product & GM of Labs at Inworld AI, where he drives product and partnership strategy to commercialize the next generation of AI-powered games. Prior to Inworld, he has an extensive background leading AI and XR product teams at Microsoft, Amazon, and Pison. Nathan holds a degree in Computer Science, Economics, and Human Centered Design from Dartmouth College and enjoys mentoring PMs and learning everything in his spare time.

Zhang, Haiyan

Title: General Manager of Gaming AI

Company: Xbox

Haiyan Zhang is a designer, engineer and maker of things. Haiyan is General Manager of Gaming AI at Microsoft’s Gaming division. An innovation and technology leader, Haiyan has spent the past 20 years working hands-on in software engineering, user experience, hardware R&D, service design, Cloud platforms, design thinking and blue-sky envisioning. She continues to push on the boundaries where technology can transform people’s lives for the better.