Sumo Digital, Roll7 and Gina Jackson added to GamesIndustry.biz HR Summit
NextGen Skills Academy also join the September 27 event in London
The GamesIndustry.biz HR Summit has added four new speakers to the bill.
The Summit will take place at BAFTA's HQ in London on Wednesday, September 27th. Tickets are on sale now.
Video games business and development leader Gina Jackson OBE has joined the event to host a roundtable titled: Can male allyship confront toxicity against women.
The session follows the overwhelming response to Gina's article 'Men need to speak up against toxicity targeting women – and on their own behalf'. The roundtable will look at practical steps we can all take to foster allyship to tackle toxicity within the games industry.
Jackson is a games veteran, having worked on nearly 300 video games across development and publishing roles. She now supports developers and publishers as a consultant, and is working on trying to solve the talent crisis in the games industry.
Joining Gina is Nisha Minhas, head of people and operations at Roll7. The developer behind Olli Olli and Rollerdome has an entirely remote workforce since its inception in 2007, and Minhas will host a talk titled: 'How to successfully run a remote studio, and make it last'. The session will look at how to maintain a strong company culture when people are not all in the same place. Minhas has spent 15 years in HR, has worked across tech and professional services and holds a fellowship in CIPD.
Finally, we have two new speakers joining our Education panel. Dr Jacob Habgood is director of education partnerships at Sumo Digital, and has spent over 30 years in the games business. He is an advocate for game-based learning and has developed a number of industry-leading educational projects within Sumo, including working with young people to create Zool: Redimensioned as part of Sumo's Academy project.
He is joined by Marcia Deakin, the co-founder of NextGen Skills Academy. Deakin has worked with games companies across the UK to develop education initiatives, including an apprenticeship scheme with Ubisoft. She also developed the Warner Bros Discovery Access X Rocksteady Games Academy project, which gives 20 aspiring game devs from underrepresented backgrounds a bootcamp learning experience across art, game design, audio and QA.
Deakin and Habgood join the education panel alongside Creative Assembly's head of talent Emma Smith and nDreams' chief people officer Tamsin O'Luanaigh.
The new speakers join Ubisoft's Chief People Officer Anika Grant, GapSquare CEO Dr Zara Nanu, communications leader Cat Channon, former Criterion boss Steve Cuss, Hutch Games' head of people Charmaine Clavier-St John, organisational psychologist Graham McAllister, ustwo games' head of people and culture Julie Piedrabuena and more to be announced. For the current line-up, click here.
The event is sponsored by Amiqus, Lighthouse Games and Rocksteady
The conference will run across two tracks and concludes at 1pm. A networking lunch will then take place, ahead of the 2023 UK Best Places To Work Awards. Tickets to the HR Summit includes completed access to the lunch and awards. You can get your tickets through here.
If you are interested in sponsoring the event, please contact George.Corner@gamesindustry.biz.