Speakers 2025

Amy Lazarus is the Director of Player Inclusion at Electronic Arts (EA), part of the team ensuring that players feel welcome, safe, and included. The Player Inclusion team supports game teams to design authentic representation in characters, world building, and narrative. Born and raised in a diverse community where it was cool to try out for the high school's inclusion dialogue group, Amy brings 30 years of experience delivering and scaling innovative and inclusive products, policies, and strategies. Prior to EA, Amy founded and scaled a profitable innovation, inclusion, and leadership consulting firm focused on inclusive and equitable workforces, work cultures, and work products. Her clients included Salesforce, Tesla, Airbnb, eBay, adidas, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Stanford's d.school, VCs, and startups. After 7 years, she closed her company to join Meta's Responsible Innovation team, where she embedded with product teams to proactively identify and mitigate unintended potential harm. Amy also previously was Executive Director of the Sustained Dialogue Institute, a non-profit equipping leaders to engage differences as strengths. A Coro Fellow in Public Affairs, Amy earned an M.S. in Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon’s Heinz School, and founded the Center for Race Relations at Duke University. She won a USA Network Characters Unite Award and has been cited for best practices in Bloomberg, The Washington Post, and books including The Breakthrough Speaker and Beyond Reason and Tolerance. Amy has sung backup for Aretha Franklin and loves hiking, practicing tai chi, and perfecting the best green smoothie. She lives in Oakland, California with her husband and two kids. 

Presenting:

• GDC Main Stage: From Idea to Action: Lessons from a New Accessibility Initiative (Presented by The Entertainment Software Association)