Vince Zampella is the Head of Respawn Entertainment, a studio he co-founded in 2010 and that was acquired by EA in 2017. Zampella, as a key member of the EA Worldwide Studio organization’s senior leadership, also oversees the team at DICE LA. Respawn has created numerous critically acclaimed, best-selling games such as Titanfall, Titanfall 2, Apex Legends and STAR WARS Jedi: Fallen Order. Prior to founding Respawn, Zampella co-created Infinity Ward – a studio specializing in military action shooters. Infinity Ward’s creation, Call of Duty, was first published in 2003 by Activision and quickly became one of the industry’s most prolific video game franchises.

A thirty-year veteran of the game industry, Amy Hennig has served as Creative Director and Lead Writer on numerous titles, including Naughty Dog’s acclaimed Uncharted series and Crystal Dynamics’ groundbreaking Soul Reaver / Legacy of Kain franchise. She recently announced a partnership with Skydance Media to explore new frontiers in interactive storytelling.

Karthik Bala along with his brother Guha are founders of Velan Studios, an indie studio on a mission to create breakthrough experiences that are magic. They also run Velan Ventures, a game focused innovation investment company. Previously, Karthik was co-founder of Vicarious Visions, having built and led teams on multi-billion dollar franchises such as Guitar Hero and Skylanders. Karthik enjoys mentoring entrepreneurs and start-up ventures and looking at how game technologies can transform the world.

Guha Bala is President of Velan Ventures, Inc. an innovation investment company with a focus on video games and game related technology companies, and Velan Studios, Inc. a game studio that focuses on the discovery of new play patterns.

Previously, Guha co-founded Vicarious Visions with his brother, Karthik, in 1991. Vicarious has since grown to become an industry-leading game developer, helping to shape popular culture around the world. The company has grown into one of the most prolific creators of video games in North America, accounting for over $4 billion in sales and 45 million units of software spanning entertainment franchises such as Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Guitar Hero, Skylanders, and Crash Bandicoot. After leading Vicarious Visions for 25 years, the brothers transitioned out of the company in 2016 to become entrepreneurs again.

Guha enjoys mentoring start-up ventures and was honored as Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s “Entrepreneur of the Year” in 2013. He is a Board Member of St. Peter’s Health Partners, the Albany Symphony, and Woodland Hill Montessori School. Guha holds an AB in Chemistry from Harvard College, and an MBA from MIT’s Sloan School of Management.

Every single day I have the opportunity to lead the talented team at Rare. Making games the world doesn’t have, as part of Xbox Game Studios.

Nikki has turned her lifelong fascination with human motion and anatomy into a thriving career as an animation technical director. From her early years as both a gymnastics and diving athlete to her current interests in rock climbing and dance, Nikki’s deep connection to movement has uniquely influenced her ability to translate physical motion into a digital representation. 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 animation and focuses on workflows that capture and assemble assets in innovative ways.

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

Cornell Verdeja-Woodson earned his B.S. in communication management and design from Ithaca College in 2009. After teaching high school English in Atlanta, Cornell went on to earn his masters in higher education and student affairs administration with an emphasis on social justice from the University of Vermont in 2013. He has spent his career, spanning over 10 years, engaging people in the tough conversations that have led to a deeper understanding of the world around us. Through his consulting firm, Brave Trainings LLC, Cornell has traveled around the country working with higher education institutions, non-profits, and corporate organizations on their inclusion efforts. He believes that authentic dialogue, an understanding of our history, as well as direct and consistent action are key to creating a more inclusive environment.

Isabelle has been working at Ubisoft Montreal for more than 15 years, where she’s been an active and passionate player for all aspects related to collaboration.

After spending multiple years as a Codev & Outsourcing Project Manager, she joined Assassin’s Creed Valhalla in 2018 as their Associate Producer Co-development. Her long-term experience in collaboration was an asset to the production team to make sure it kept evolving their ways of working with studios around the world; but also to continue building strong relationships with both internal and external partners. Isabelle has also been an active member of the XDS Advisory Committee since 2016.

Wladia Summers has forged a successful and distinguished career in video game development and production, with 25 years of experience working on a multitude of games launched globally on an array of platforms. She has proven track records in building QA teams worldwide and establishing solid processes, negotiating initiatives, enhancing performance, building partnerships, improving quality, reducing costs and generating revenue. Wladia has brought her expertise to such well-known companies as Kabam as the Head of Worldwide Central QA and Konami Digital Entertainment as Senior Director of Quality Assurance to Vivendi Games as Quality Assurance Brand Manager. She also founded and served as President and CEO of her own firm, ZS Quality, which provided QA outsourcing, customer service, technical support, fulfillment and operations services to small and middle-sized companies. Today, Wladia serves as the Head of Global Operations at Red Cerberus where she built the organization and manages the company’s operations and delivery of Functionality, Certification, Localization and Translations services.

25+ Years of QA experience. Currently Sr. Director of QA at Activision, previously Sony First Party QA Manager, and Hardware QA at Sun Microsystems. Work on 200+ titles in different roles including QA, Design, and Production.

Ron Ashtiani has provided creative leadership on 3 block buster Marvel movies, over 30 games, and has worked with huge brands like Harry Potter, Warner Bros, Sony and Microsoft.
He has led several businesses over the years including visual design company, Atomhawk, which he built from a team of 4 into an international brand with studios in the UK and Canada, the business was acquired in 2017 and Ron exited in 2019.
Ron has been listed in both the UK top 100 people in video games and the UK top 100 in digital media. His passion is in growing leaders, inspiring teams and making ground breaking projects.

Bill is a 25 year game industry veteran who has been with Ubisoft Singapore since 2015. Bill is currently the Singapore Game Director for Assassin's Creed Valhalla. Bill has previously worked at several influential game studios, including Looking Glass, Dynamix and Ion Storm. His game credits include notable titles like the Deus Ex series, Batman Arkham Origins and Assassin's Creed Origins.

Vlad oversees business development at AMC Studio in Bucharest and is the go-to-guy for AMC's partners. He makes sure that just as the business grows, relationships are nurtured and grow to be successful co-development stories.

With a rewarding history of growing partnerships for booming tech companies like Oracle or Bitdefender, Vlad decided to follow his passion for games and foray in the Video Game industry.

Now he brings his experience and know-how to AMC, streamlining collaboration with highly successful studios like Wargaming, Treyarch and 2K Games, and creating new, burgeoning partnerships which we can't wait to reveal when the time comes!

Curtis Cherrington is a gaming industry veteran with over 30 years of experience and over 35 credited titles. He has developed games for such companies as Midway, THQ, Fox, Disney Interactive and now Electronic Arts where he is a Senior Manager of Worldwide External Development (XDI). He supports a significant number of EA’s studios with support in all disciplines as well as having keen understanding of the technology involved. He has negotiated numerous deals from both a publisher and vendor perspective resulting in well into the 100’s of millions of revenue.

Brian has been developing games in Dallas for over 20 years, with 16 of those years at Gearbox Software. As the Production Management Director he helps all aspects of the business to identify and coordinate strategic partnerships with external developers. The best games require the best developers, so why not find the best developers in the world to work with?

A ten-year industry veteran, Royal’s innovative, highly-organized, and erudite approach to video game Art Direction has been integral to Liquid Development’s success.

The company has come to depend not just on his keen eye and attention to detail, but his emotional intelligence. Always striving to put the client first, both at the macro-level of understanding their project’s desired aesthetic, and the micro-level of building efficient workflow pipelines and robust tracking and communications strategies, he’s made major contributions to the success of Gearbox’s Borderlands franchise, and 343 Industries’ Halo franchise.

Discovering 3d modelling while training to be an architect, Dragos switched to game art, his true passion, where he's been active since 2010.
Starting as a junior artists 10 years ago, he is now in charge of the environment art department for AMC Studio, having extensive knowledge of environment art creation pipelines used in triple A titles throughout the years.
Dragos is also heavily involved in educational programs, teaching students about 3d game art through AMC Studios's partnership with the National University of Arts in Bucharest.

Ryan has been with EA for over 15 years. Ryan began his career at EA as an artist, working on environments, characters, and lighting. He made the jump to external development management after developing a passion for working with vendors and helping improve workflows externally. His ability to understand the perspectives from artist to CEO, helps him forecast risk and find opportunities where others may not see any.

Spanning across multiple game developers and publishers, Andrew Jamison's vibrant career in production has led him to attain a deep understanding and proficiency in the game development lifecycle. A highlight in his career was his role as Senior Producer at Sony Interactive Entertainment’s London Studios, on two Wonderbook titles and the industry-defining PSVR launch title, Playstation VR Worlds.

Andrew's role at THE THIRD FLOOR is to support the growth and development of the in-house AR and VR toolset, along with the establishment of tight-knit relationships among games developers through his promotion of THE THIRD FLOOR's capabilities in delivering valuable visualization for titles in development.

Ron Henseleit began his career as a geophysicist in seismic data processing and software development after obtaining an Bachelor of Science in Engineering Geophysics in Canada. That career in engineering took an unexpected turn and eventually led to Electronic Arts where in his 16+ years, Ron has worked with almost all central teams including Localization, Certification and now QA. Ron now leads the QA organization at three of EA's most exciting and challenging studios; Respawn, Bioware and Motive. Titles in these studios span those with long development cycles and those with rapid live services where challenges in QA abound. Recently, titles include Apex Legends, Jedi Fallen Order and Star Wars: Squadrons.

Brian Waddle is President of Sales & Marketing at Room 8 Group. He is a games industry veteran and entrepreneur who has supported game teams around the world for fifteen years. Brian is an owner/board member of Telltale games where he and his partner purchased the company out of bankruptcy. Before that he was President of Sales & Marketing at Virutos Games. He led Sales & Marketing at Havok through two acquisitions, to Intel then to Microsoft. He led sales at Image Metrics and help during the early set up of Facware. Before coming to the games industry Brian participated in the growth consumer products at Scotts Miracle Gro LLC (NYSE: SMG). He served in many roles related to sales, marketing, technology, and IT and actively participated on merger & acquisition teams. He is a well-rounded executive with game services, game technology experience as well as game credits.

I’m born and raised in Sweden but now living in Los Angeles. Married and a father to five.
In 2006 I founded the sound studio Red Pipe in Stockholm. Last year in 2019 Red Pipe Sound Co. was launched in LA, together with audio professional Adam Boyd. Also recently I created “HIFI Your Brand” a creative Audio Agency working with Audio Branding.
From an early age I was passionate about sound and music and now I have worked in the industry for 25 years.
I experienced adrenal burn out 5 years ago, which changed my perspective on life and work.

QA Director at Gearbox Software and Gearbox Publishing, based in Quebec City, managing Functional QA, Certification, Localization and Localization QA. In the Video Game Quality Assurance since 2007.

Artist and Supervisor in Wargaming.net. Responsible for creating maps and content, working with internal and outsource studios

After 15 years of project management and systems work in Energy, JC found his calling at BioWare in 2005. Ever since, as Producer of External Development, he has been expanding and enhancing the studio group’s ability to create the best story-based games in the world through global partnerships in art, animation, engine and prerendered cinematics, UI/UX, and engineering. JC has worked on every BioWare title since Neverwinter Nights, including Jade Empire, SWTOR, the Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchises, Anthem, and all unannounced titles.

Steve Escalante is the General Manager and Founder of independent games publisher, Versus Evil. An industry veteran with 20 years of game development and publishing experience, Escalante started his own indie development team in 1999. Prior to starting Versus Evil, he also held several VP and Director level positions with the most notable as Director of Marketing for five years at Bethesda Softworks. Now with seven years running Versus Evil, Escalante’s indie roots and AAA publishing background is being leveraged in the sales, marketing, distribution and business development needs for mobile, console and PC games.

After meeting Liquid Development artists while bartending, Chuck began teaching himself 3D production. Soon he was working for the company, and rose through the ranks from contractor to staff artist to Art Manager before becoming the studio's Production Director in 2017. In that capacity, he has overseen Liquid Development’s contributions to AAA titles like Gearbox Software’s Borderlands 3, id Software's Doom Eternal, Treyarch's Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 and more!

His seven years with Liquid Development have honed an expertise in production management, and Chuck has a passion for using that expertise to combine internal, external, and cross-studio resources into creative solutions that satisfy each client’s unique requirements.

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 300+ externally co-developed titles ranging from AAA to indie to mobile, alongside contributions to 40+ theatrically released films as well as 2 animated TV series.

Benoit Richer started his career in the games industry in 1998 at Ubisoft, mostly as Level Designer, Level Design Director, and Game Director on multiple Rainbow Six titles as well as Far Cry Instincts. Outside of Ubisoft, Benoit was a Lead artist at Microids Canada, Level Design Director on Army of Two: The 40th Day at EA Montreal, and more recently he was the Game Director on Batman: Arkham Origins on WB Games Montreal. Benoit rejoined Ubisoft as a Game Director on the VR thriller Transference, and now as a Game Director for co-development and World on Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.

Damien started his career as a Financial Planning Analyst at Ubisoft Film & Television.
After a couple years, he took a leap of faith and shifted to the production team on the Rabbids Invasion TV series, before transitioning to production in video game development.
Since joining Ubisoft, he has worked on games such as Assassin’s Creed Origins, Skull & Bones and now as the Senior Associate Producer for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.

Robbert-Jan Brems is a Senior Technical artist with around 10 years of experience at companies like Codemasters, Eidos-Montreal, EA Vancouver, and Unity, where he worked on Franchises like Thief, Tomb Raider and Fifa.

As a Solutions Technical Artist at Unity, he has helped drive new partnerships in several strategic verticals (Gaming, Healthcare, Media and Entertainment, etc.),
and now he recently transitioned into a Product Design role to design upcoming production tools.

On the side, Robb has done several presentations at the Game Developers Conference, Siggraph, and other events on topics
like "How Breakdance Taught Me to be a Technical Artist" or "Identifying Technical Art by its Habits".

Global Production at Capcom assists the internal development teams in finding and managing external solutions for their art creation needs. As the Lead Manager, Troy guides the team as they navigate the needs of internal teams and external partners.

Jesse is a gaming industry veteran of 19 years. Along with being a character artist, he has been working with external development since 2007 when he took over the lead character artist role during the production of Ghostbusters: The Video Game. Since then, he has helped manage teams of all sizes, started an award-winning studio in Brazil, and now finds himself at Gearbox helping deliver AAA gaming experiences utilizing the best studios from around the world.

Currently works as Lead Producer for SOEDESCO Publishing, a young & upcoming video game publisher in the Netherlands. Responsibilities consist of ensuring our portfolio meets its targets on time and on budget by directing and supporting our internal team & external partners, as well as optimizing the publishing process structure for stability and growth. Feels privileged to be able to play a key role in investigating & signing new projects, services, territories and platforms, and fortunate to have the chance to help give shape to the vision, goals and planning for SOEDESCO's future.

Miguel Corti is the current senior manager of Global Production at Capcom, a Japan-based developer/publisher. He and his team oversee the localization of all of Capcom's globally released released titles, and are involved in everything from script writing, motion capture, voice recording, and, of course, translation.

Daniel Monastero is the CEO and Business Developer of Garage 227 Studios a bi-national (USA/Brazil) Game Developer and Outsourcing Studios. Daniel is a Lawyer graduated at Mackenzie Presbyterian University and has worked with law enforcement from 2002 until 2012 when decided to move to Los Angeles to study 3D Art at Gnomon School and started a career as a 3D Artist and Game Designer. In 2014 Garage 227 Studios was founded and in 2017 Garage incorporated in the USA and became Bi-National, now Daniel focus mainly in running the Studio and developing relationships inside and outside of the gaming industry.

Sharing energy, life and journey still is the main goal of Garage 227 Studios that embraces every opportunity to work with a diverse range of people, projects and companies.

Operating in games for 25+ years, Joe is the Director of Sales for BOSi Art Studios where he is charged to open up business relationships in Western markets - providing beautiful high quality art and animation services. Prior to BOSi, he seized an opportunity to join Unity Technologies as their 18th team member during the formative period - as the first business development & sales focused employee.  Joe brings to the table a large breadth of experience steeped in production as a Producer and Designer, which allows him to effectively communicate between core developers as well as business stakeholders - to help solve problems.  As a passion project, Joe advises Independent game developers, enjoys helping students break into the games industry, and hosts a series of small intimate roundtables for international conferences.

Julia Bianco Schoeffling is the COO of The Halp Network and a voice and performance capture casting director. Recently, she had the honor of casting the first playable transgender role in the upcoming video game, Tell Me Why. Julia has hired talent on and off-screen for over 17 years, and has been fortunate to work with narrative teams for hundreds of games. Throughout her journey, she is proud to have connected actors, directors, recording engineers, and writers to career-defining roles. She engages with people from all over the world advocating for an exciting career in games and future technologies.

Tim heads up Atomhawk, an award winning visual development studio based in the UK and Canada. Atomhawk's clients include EA, WB Games, Xbox Game Studios, 2K Games. Tim loves working with teams who want to grow financially, operationally and creatively. He is a member of the operating board of Sumo Group plc, whose businesses provide creative and development services to the video games and entertainment industries from ten studios in the UK, India and Canada.

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 Imaginati Studio, Microsoft's Lionhead Studio, and XBOX's The Coalition Studio.

In 2020, Carla acquired a Manager role on EA's XDI Team, focusing on de-risking External Development for EA Studio game teams and searching the globe for trusted and talented partners.

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

An established expert in best practices related to distributed development, Tina Merry has an extensive production track record in games, directing and coaching large global teams under a distributed development model. Shipping over 25 “AAA” video game titles across multiple platforms while working with recognized brands and organizations including FIFA, Electronic Arts and King Activision, she has directed global business functions including Quality Assurance and Central Art. Certified in both Cultural Intelligence and Unconscious Bias (Train the Trainer) frameworks, Tina leverages production, project management and global leadership experiences to help organizations improve effectiveness while supporting inclusion, innovation, and production excellence.

As Head of Studio, Owen Hurley – based at Technicolor’s 2000+ person animation studio in Bangalore, India – oversees day-to-day studio operations and strategy, with a focus on innovation and creative in-house excellence. He is also heavily involved with business development and client relations.
With multiple workstreams in both the episodic animation and games spaces, Owen ensures that the superior quality of work the extraordinarily talented team at the studio is renowned for continues to be met and exceeded. Owen reports directly to Greg Mandel, Managing Director, Animation & Games in Los Angeles.

Having transitioned through the roles of Director/Producer, Studio Creative Director, and Vice President, Creative, Owen has extensive leadership experience as well as directing and producing across film, games and television animation. Prior to his work in a variety of roles with Technicolor, Owen served as Director of Animation and Cinematics at Vancouver-based Relic Entertainment from 2005 through 2010 – where he collaborated with some of the world’s best game developers, bringing projects such as Company of Heroes and the Dawn of War series to fruition.

Owen’s previous production experience includes eight years with Vancouver’s Mainframe Entertainment, where he directed pioneering CGI animated series such as Beast Wars, ReBoot, War Planets and Weird-Ohs, as well as the world’s first computer animated direct-to-DVD movie, Casper’s Haunted Christmas. He directed the movie debut of Barbie in 2001 with Barbie in The Nutcracker for Mattel Entertainment and went on to direct three subsequent Barbie films before changing his focus to video games with his move to Relic Entertainment and then Technicolor.

Owen’s artistic influences include Tex Avery, John Woo, and the Marx Brothers. In his free time he enjoys hiking, cooking, travel, photography, and yoga.

For many years, I worked in multiple animation studios such as Wildbrain and Bardel as a Visual Effects artist while producing short films. I later worked at Ingenuity Studio, Goldtooth, MPC and ILM as a compositor. Notable credits: Puss in Boots, The Dragon Prince, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Brave New World.

After immigrating to Canada from Iran at age 25, Babak pursued multiple creative
disciplines, primarily graphic design, sculpture, digital art and animation. For the last 10 years he has been working as a Visual Effects Artist for Double Negative, Method
Studios and Scanline VFX on numerous productions.

Previous VFX credits include: Game of Thrones, Star Trek Beyond, Avengers: Infinity War, Black Panther, Wonder Woman and Alice Through the Looking Glass just to name a few. He recently cowrote and codirected his award winning debut short film The Seahorse Trainer which qualified for the 2020
Academy Awards.

Ricardo is a VFX Artist with over 10 years of experience, he has worked at companies like Digital Domain, ILM and Apple. Some of his credits include, X-Men, Star Wars: The Last Jedi and Captain Marvel.

Ricardo also has a big passion for independent filmmaking. He co-wrote/co-directed his most recent project, 'The Seahorse Trainer', which is a surreal short film that has made appearances at multiple international film festivals such as LAShorts, New Jersey International Film Festival and the Seattle International Film Festival where it won a jury award, making it a 2020 Academy Award qualifier.

Creator and host of "The Electric Playground,” Victor Lucas is an Emmy-winning videogame television pioneer. ”The Electric Playground," hit the airwaves in 1997 and in 2008 became a daily TV series seen around the world. Victor has produced several other TV series including, “Reviews on the Run,” and also partnered with game publishers to produce documentaries for several AAA franchises like “Tomb Raider,” “Metal Gear Solid,” “Fallout” and “Batman: Arkham.” Follow Victor’s work at EPN.tv and YouTube.com/EPNtv

Dave is a fifteen 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.