Session Information
| Title | Creativity in Leadership |
| Presenter(s) | Megan Gaiser - As one of the first female CEO's in the gaming industry, Megan's Gaiser spent the last 15 years experiencing the game industry as both an insider, and an outsider. This unique vantage point enabled her to not only sidestep the outdated habits of the game industry, but to create and capture the markets that had been left behind. As CEO of HerInteractive, she gained a reputation for identifying and engaging unproven markets, inspiring collaboration and a commitment to the highest artistic and aesthetic qualities. In partnership with her team, Megan was responsible for breathing life into Her Interactive by co-creating intelligent games for girls and women. Dubbed by the NYT as 'The UnBarbie' of computer games, Gaiser grew the company to $8.5M in revenues by co-creating the highly successful and award-winning game franchise based on the Nancy Drew mystery book series. She recently formed Contagious Creativity to foster more diversity in both the content and leadership of the industry. Her reputation led to her being named among "Game Industry's 100 Most Influential Women" by Next Generation; "Top 10 Most Influential Women of the Decade" by Gaming Angels; "2011 IndieCade Trailblazer Award for Lifetime Achievement"; 15 Cine Golden Eagle awards, three New York festival awards, and the International Documentary Milano Award. Joe Brewer - Joe has three bachelors degrees in physics, mathematics, and interdisciplinary studies and a masters in atmospheric sciences. He is a complexity researcher, innovation strategist, experience designer, and serial social entrepreneur who brings a wealth of expertise to the adoption of sustainable solutions at the cultural scale. Among his notable achievements are the creation of an undergraduate degree program in Earth Systems, Environment and Society at the University of Illinois and design of new collaboration protocols for strategic communications among European NGO's with WWF-UK and Oxfam, Great Britain. He was an active member of the Center for Complex Systems Research from 2001 to 2005, where he studied pattern formation in self-organizing systems. He was a research fellow at the Rockridge Institute in 2007-08 analyzing political discourse in the United States. He contracted with the International Centre for Earth Simulation in Geneva in 2010-11 to help build a globally-focused high performance computing facility dedicated to holistic simulations of the dynamic Earth. His experiences as a social entrepreneur and cross-disciplinary scholar weave together a combination of skills dedicated to open collaboration, interactive design, and empowered civic action for catalyzing change toward greater resilience in our turbulent world. |
| Time | Thursday, October 16, 11:00a-12:00p |
| Location | Ballroom |
| Format | Speaker |
| Description | Megan Gaiser was one of the first female CEO's in the gaming industry. Gaiser's position as an insider and an outsider, a CEO and a woman of a modestly sized, non-Triple A studio gave her a unique vantage point. She had the opportunity to learn how to create and capture the market - and hearts - in order to thrive. After 15 years, she left Her Interactive to focus on fostering more diversity in both the content and leadership of the industry. Her talk will focus on the most important lessons learned as CEO. She will be joined by Joe Brewer to explore the critical role of creativity as well as the need to establish more humanistic values in leadership. |