Patrick Klaus is Vice President and General Manager for Electronic Arts’ Motive Studio and has over 20 years of experience in the games industry. In 2019, Patrick returned to Electronic Arts after seven years at Ubisoft Quebec, where he led the studio during the release of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. Before that, Patrick spent ten years at Electronic Arts in the United Kingdom in various development, operations, and publishing roles. At Motive, Patrick’s mission and passion are building a world-class team focused on creating innovative AAA action games within iconic worlds where every player feels like the hero. The studio is currently working on a Dead Space remake as well as another unannounced project.

Leah Hoyer is the GM and Vice President of Creative for Wizards of the Coast’s New IP Studio. She has developed and produced television series, video games, and interactive experiences for some of the world’s most beloved entertainment companies (Disney, Xbox, Telltale Games, Bungie) for over twenty years. She is a recognized expert in interactive storytelling and franchise development across various media. She is passionate about supporting diverse voices in entertainment and working to make everyone feel that gaming is for them.

Joe Nickolls is Co-Founder and Managing Director of Timbre Games Studio, bringing with him over 22 years of experience in AAA Video Game development. Along with a passion for diversity of people and thought, Joe brings a sense of humour and community to the Vancouver market and is driven to set up a centre of excellence in gaming entertainment.

Most recently Joe was Vice President and GM of Maxis - Electronic Arts, leading the Sims team to record breaking results. Joe has worked at some of the biggest gaming companies in the world like Electronic Arts, Microsoft, and Capcom, and has overseen some of the largest gaming franchises in the industry including FIFA, NHL, The Sims, SimCity, Puzzle Fighter, Dead Rising and countless others. Joe is committed to building Timbre into a new kind of studio for Vancouver, with a team of some of the best leaders in the industry. Timbre’s focus is AAA games, diversity, inclusion and equity for all.

Tattooed, besuited and a fan of French Bulldogs, Joe is an early adopter, coffee snob, average skier, & usually the tallest guy in the room.

Shiew Yeu Loh joined Amber Studio in May this year as their Art Executive Producer to help with Blockchain Game and NFT Art Production. She will be providing mentorship to the art team as well as coaching them about process, tools and pipeline. A game industry veteran, she started as a texture artist, a generalist and a producer in 2004 before working at Electronic Arts as the Senior External Development Artist for 14 years. During her time at the Sims, Shiew Yeu worked on Sims Nintendo Wii, Sims 3, Sims Medieval, Sims Online Store, Sims Mobile and Sims 4. In 2020, she moved onto Pocket Gems as an Art Manager to oversee the mobile game War Dragon by working with the dev team, art leadership and outsourcing vendors. She was also in charge of implementing diversity and inclusion content into their character library. Shiew Yeu has been a speaker at various game industry conferences regarding being a mother in the game industry as well as topics that center around diversity and inclusion.

Phil started his career over 30 years ago building 8-bit games at Realtime Associates.  The day an Intel 486 showed up on his desk was a revelation.  He’s been the Project Art Director at Zipper Interactive (Sony), managed the Art Department at ArenaNet, built VR at Oculus, and is now with Amazon Games, working on an ambitious External Development Program.  Phil never gets tired of telling teams, “Yes, I can find you a great partner to help build your vision."

After 9 years at EA, first as a Development Manager and then as a Manager on EA’s XDI (External Development Intelligence team), Caroline recently joined Riot as a Senior Producer on the XDev Workforce team. She is focused on longterm initiatives and best practices to help Riot thoughtfully scale its external development engagements.

Since entering the industry in 2007 Jake has served in key positions related to Product Management, Production, Design, Business Development, Studio Operations, Consumer Sales, Marketing, and PR. As a result, he approaches each production with an intimate understanding of player/audience psychology, publishing strategy, production pipeline optimization, game mechanics/design, and studio management oversight. During his tenure, he has overseen the release of 10+ internally developed projects and 700+ externally co-developed titles ranging from AAA to indie to mobile, alongside contributions to 60+ theatrically released films as well as 2 animated TV series.

Jake currently serves as the GM for Virtuos’ North America group, which includes the Business Development group, alongside studios in Montreal, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

Christian has been working with Business Development, Sales, Contract- and Engagement Management for more than 10 years. Since 2020 Christian has been leading the business development and commercial strategy activities for Vizlab Studios, a Danish service provider specializing in Explorative Concept Design for Game Studios. Christian is passionate about creating long lasting professional relationships, focusing on collaboration, transparency, mutual responsibility, and accountability. These are key values that are driving the entire engagement lifecycle at Vizlab Studios. Christian’s favorite games are: Diablo II, HOMM 3, Hitman 2: Silent Assassin, Fallout 3, CS:GO, and FIFA.

An industry veteran with more than two decades in interactive gaming, Dan Prigg is Head of Skydance Interactive. In this role, he is responsible for setting and executing the division’s overall strategy as well as overseeing development, partnerships and new business opportunities for the leading VR studio. Prior to joining Skydance, he was VP of Production for Aspyr and VP of Operations for the Discovery Kids team at Discovery, Inc. He has also worked at notable companies including Scopely as an Executive Producer, Director of Content Acquisition at Unity, and Director of Digital Distribution for GameStop.

Ben Skutt is an Associate Art Director on the League of Legends Skins Team. In his 10 years of industry experience, Ben has held a variety of roles as a 2D and 3D artist, outsource manager, producer, game designer, and art director. Previously at Riot, Ben held the title "Head of Art Outsourcing." During that time he authored Riot's Art Outsource Manager training program and helped create the central outsourcing services team. Ben is excited to now return to his creative roots art directing skins for LoL with industry leading internal and external teams!

Over 10 years ago Jennifer Chang was a founding member of the Art Central team, the first iteration of centralized outsourcing at Zynga. She now is Executive Producer for Zynga’s External Development Team leading the small but mighty band of producers providing support to Zynga studios worldwide, managing a variety of partners in disciplines from Art, Audio, Engineering, to DEI. In addition to ExDev, Jennifer is a member of Zynga’s Production Council unifying and elevating the discipline through predictable development and delivery of high-quality products and services that meet the needs of the business and players.

Eric has credits on over 100 video game titles and on more than 30 animated releases throughout his tenure with High Voltage Software. He has collaborated with the likes of Tim Burton, Jon Favreau, Seth McFarlane and Hideo Kojima. Some of his recent experience with mainstream gaming includes Fortnite, the Walking Dead and Saints Row series. Eric is passionate about creating jaw dropping entertainment and bringing people from all over the world together. His creativity is boundless, which is nice, because his task load is similarly boundless.

Preferring in-game PvP over the real thing, Nigel exchanged his early military career for software startups and leading dev teams. Nearly 30 years on, Nigel embodies the Old Man Yells At Cloud meme, from work in systems made from duct tape and superglue to triple-A, VR and mobile. As Studio Director of Production, Nigel co-manages delivery, business development and operations of Snowed In Studios, which has scaled from 30 developers to almost 200. With a love of psychology, Nigel earned Agile and PM certifications to settle philosophical disputes once and for all, and holds an MBA from the University of Ottawa.

Jeaneane Falkler, President of Technicolor Games previously of Keywords, Microsoft and International Game Technology is a prolific leader within the gaming space, having held numerous executive roles leading global business strategy, service innovation, sales and account management, and operations supervision. Falkler is known for building and retaining high performing global teams focused on increasing revenue and market share in the games industry.

With more than 15 years of experience in FMCG (L'Oréal), Film and Videogame industries, I am passionate about building AAA teams driven by the desire to outperform our common goals. Today, as Director of Operations & Strategy, I oversee business and production operations for EA Create. EA Create is a collective of content production teams partnering with game teams to achieve outstanding visuals, audio, and technology.

With over 2 decades of global leadership experience, Tina Merry is a video games industry veteran and subject matter expert in directing globally distributed teams. A certified Cultural Intelligence expert and facilitator, Diversity Champion and Business Consultant, Tina is passionate about leveraging the benefits of CQ to enable innovation, excellence and inclusion when working with diverse talent. Cultural Intelligence (CQ) predicts our ability to work and relate effectively in culturally diverse situations, whatever form cultural diversity appears including nationality, ethnicity, gender, age, political affiliation and so on. CQ is what leaders and organizations need to attract, retain and leverage globally diverse talent.

Dr. Pennefather has mentored over 200 team members on 50 emerging technology projects in project-based learning environments. His goal is to support 21st Century skills and competencies that continue to build on a person's innate capacities to be creative, collaborative and manage their own learning. Learner interactions are informed by ongoing research and writing into collaborative practices, project-based learning, mentoring, self-regulation, rapid prototyping, agile software development, and a commitment to bridging the gap between what is taught, with what is requested by a rapidly changing, team-based digital media industry.

From her early years as both a gymnastics and diving athlete, Nikki has turned her lifelong connection with movement into a thriving career as a technical artist and UX designer. Nikki has spent her professional career navigating the pipelines of real-time development at companies such as Apple, EA, Lucasfilm and now Google. She specializes in real-time interactions and focuses on experiences that capture and represent assets in seamless and innovative ways.

With experience in games, film, virtual production, VR, ML and AR, Nikki is passionate about fostering collaboration across these industries and empowering diverse perspectives to push the boundaries of real-time development.

Sunny is an industry professional with 16 years of experience working in the video games industry. Before joining BOSi, Sunny had been working for the9, a Chinese video games developer and publisher for 4 years , where she was a Business partner and Sr. HR manager. Sunny has a background in games developing, publishing, outsourcing and team training. With experience leading BOSi’s expansion in both China and the US, Sunny understands most challenges from each geography, as well as keeping teams focused in their functional areas. “Dream bigger, create together” is always the vision of team BOSi.

Matt has spent his 15+ year career furthering his passion for exdev across multiple games and software studios. He continues to promote cross team collaboration while leading, mentoring, and coaching teams to improve all aspects of external production.

With more than a decade of experience in the voiceover industry, Jessica Kent’s expertise in directing, casting, and producing voiceover for games has led to her current position as Head of Studio for SIDE LA. Having previously headed dialogue production at Riot Games, Jessica guides game developers in the best practices to bring their characters and stories to life. Her passion is working with creators to define each game’s unique voice, and executing towards the highest quality audio production possible.

Michael's career in games began in 1997. Roles since then have included Mocap Specialist, Technical Art Director, Development Director, and Studio Founder. Over the past 25 years, Michael has lived and worked in Canada, The UK, China, Vietnam, and Singapore. Currently, he is the External Development Manager at The Coalition Studio, part of the Microsoft Xbox Game Studios family.

Ninel Anderson is a serial entrepreneur with over 10 years experience in video games and external game development. Ninel stands for sustainable game development and equal opportunity for every talent to work on projects of their dreams. She is currently CEO, Founder at Devoted studios, production company, that manages external game development on a global scale with a network of 1400+ talent. Ninel is also a host at Devoted Speakeasy, a video podcast which aims to help video game professionals share their knowledge and learn from each other.

Thomas has over 25 years of experience in digital productions, focusing on Strategy, XR, and UX to support digital transformation across various industries. Past XR projects he led span from product design and training to marketing applications for internationally known brands. Thomas is a frequent speaker at international conferences, an advisor for start-ups, and a fixture at industry associations and events. His love for digital creation started when he was playing Pac-Man against his twin brother on the Atari 800XL, leading Thomas to develop his first own video game in 1996.

Sean Murch has worked in the video game business since 1995. He has worked as a producer, department head, CEO, and BD executive for companies like Radical Entertainment, Electronic Arts, Playful Entertainment and Next Level Games. As a partner at ISM he has, for the past 11 years, been solely focused on doing development, publishing, distribution, financing and acquisition deals for his AAA developer clients around the world. ISM has closed over $2B in business since it’s inception.

Laurent Lugbull has worked at Ubisoft for over 22 years, in a variety of positions on both business and production side. Today, he’s in charge of defining the Procurement Strategy for all Production and Marketing needs. Based at Ubisoft HQ in Paris, France, his current role involves understanding the market and Ubisoft’s needs, supporting dedicated local procurement teams who accompany Ubisoft dev and marketing teams in their search for external partners and facilitate the business relationship with them.

Carl got his start in games in 1994. Carl has worked at small and large companies alike from a buyer and a service provider perspective, most notably Michael Crichton’s Timeline Entertainment, Nvidia, Electronic Arts and his current role as Senior Director of External Development at Zynga. In this Business Operations role, he has built a worldwide organization which facilitates all of Zynga’s external development and partner relations involving Art, Engineering, Audio, UI/UX, Co-Dev, QA, Localization/LQA, Narrative, UA and Marketing/Publishing. In addition, Carl helps coordinate and facilitate M&A integrations for Zynga and its subsidiaries.

David Lam has been working in the games industry for over 20 years. He started out locally in Vancouver as a student at VFS and quickly found himself drawn to character art. David has had a long career at Electronic Arts working on titles such as SSX, NBA Street, Need for Speed, FIFA, and NHL. During his time as a production artist, David found enjoyment and fulfillment in teaching. He has taught BCIT, Think Tank Training Center, and VanArts. He has also participated as a demo artist for Wacom. David joined Bioware in 2012 as an Associate External Art Director and continued in a broader role as Senior Art Manager supporting the Edmonton, Montreal and Austin studios. In 2018, David accepted a new role at Turn10, a first party Xbox studio, as Senior Producer supporting external development for the Forza franchise. In 2021, David was recruited by Riot to lead one of their key art teams on League of Legends as Director of Art Management. Recently, David accepted an expanded role of co-chair of the XDS Advisory Board.

Prior to joining Virtuos Games in 2019 to develop and oversee a Key Partnerships Program Dennis developed and oversaw external production programs at Industrial Light & Magic, Lucasfilm, and Telltale Games.

With a passion for expanding international presence and market share through strategic partnerships, his depth of experience in the game, animation, and film industries has resulted in long-term relationships, creating business opportunities based on evolving trends, and being consistently relied upon to bring creative solutions to challenges.

Kassi began her career in gaming over 13 years ago working in external development. Since then, she's worked on over 100 titles, been a Producer, and expanded the outsourcing & localization department to 11 studios worldwide. She currently is the Outside Services Director and runs all external services for Glu Mobile, including external development, localization, and independent contractors. She enjoys working with external teams and implementing them so they feel ownership of the game they are working on. She's presented at numerous international and US conferences. Kassi holds a BA in Communication and an MBA.

External Development veteran who started in the games industry as an artist. Began working with external teams at Sumo Digital in 2007, before becoming Outsource Manager; successfully guiding Sumo’s fledgling India studio into a fully integrated partner, while overseeing their rapidly expanding external development program. Took a central position at Xbox Games Studios in 2014 to support and guide their Global Studios with External Development Partnerships. Joined the XDS Advisory Committee in the same year, where he remains excited by the future of external development and a passionate advocate for what we can achieve together.

Carla has been active in the games industry since 2005 where she started as an Artist at Supersonic Software in the UK. She's been focused on External Development for 10+ years both in the UK and Canada at game developers such as Microsoft's Lionhead Studio, XBOX's The Coalition Studio, and EA.

In 2022, Carla acquired the role of Head of External Production with Behaviour Digital, owning the development process for all External Production.

Carla's passion for process, culture, team management, and KPIs has led her to host various talks at XDS conferences.

Dave is a seventeen year veteran of business & creative development for games, film, and television. In 2018 Dave joined Phoenix Labs, where he specializes in connecting internal challenges with external solutions. Dave has been an XDS attendee since 2015 and a member of the XDS Advisory Committee since 2020.

I’m Arthur, a French guy living in France and yes, as all my countrymen, I am a foodie. I’ve been working at Ubisoft Procurement for 6 years, handling Production & Marketing External Services at HQ. That includes basically any kind of service that is being discussed here at XDS but also Media, Events or Esports for e.g. Our goal, together with our Montreal counterparts, is to make sure our studios are working with the right partners, with the right commercial conditions and with minimum risk.

Melissa Lee is CEO at Massive Black, a multidisciplinary blue sky, creative studio specializing in IP development and research and design. She has spent her career at Massive Black managing the creative development process and business development, with clients ranging from Google to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Over her 20 years at Massive Black, Melissa has produced numerous international artist workshops attended by industry leaders including EA, Blizzard, Hasbro, Weta, and Riot Games. Her strategic thinking and leadership focuses on driving meaningful innovation throughout the creative journey, as well as impactful concepting strategies. Melissa is passionate about talent development, having represented and mentored artists from around the world.