Advanced Certificate in Video Game Publishing

Alexei Pastushenko has been leading multi-national and cross-functional publishing teams to deliver growth (including the EU, Russia, Middle East, Turkey, etc.) for the biggest gaming companies (such as Ubisoft, 2K, Warner, Bethesda, Rockstar, and many others). After leaving his latest post at Activision Blizzard, he partnered up with his former colleagues to create an independent publisher, The 4 Winds Entertainment, focusing on launching new products in high-growth opportunity markets. Alexey is responsible for managing all operations and leading the whole organization to deliver on the strategy and ambitions of the company.

Ana Alfageme is based in Cork, Ireland and works at Blizzard Entertainment, managing and leading teams in Ireland, France, Korea, and Taiwan. She is a passionate leader who focuses on creating world-class teams to support a worldwide player community in a multichannel environment. Blizzard’s service operations span multi-channels of digital self-service, social media, and online interactions with their talented support staff. These digital and human interactions translate into meaningful data for their franchise development teams. Ana is a true believer of culture and places a huge focus bringing values like respect, integrity, empowerment, trust, collaboration, innovation, diversity, equality, and world-class service to life at Blizzard Entertainment.

Carlos Pombo is a video games professional with more than 25 years of expertise in companies such as Nintendo and Activision Blizzard. As Activision Blizzard General Manager for Iberia and member of the EMEA leadership team, Carlos has worked in franchises like Call of Duty, Skylanders, Crash Bandicoot, Overwatch, World of Warcraft, Diablo, and many others. He has been overseeing finance, sales, marketing, operations, consumer products, and esports departments throughout his career. He also led the merger between Vivendi and Activision and the evolution from retail to digital over the last years. Carlos brings in-depth knowledge of market trends and industry, as well as effective integration into strategic roadmaps. He was instrumental at exploring improvement areas to support customer requirements, brand image, and optimized ways of introducing innovative products, and he is well recognized for managing winning negotiations to achieve business objectives.

Eric Chauveau has spent most of his 20+ year-long career as a marketeer working on games with strong communities. His long stint at Blizzard Entertainment allowed him to navigate most of the business models, platforms, and ecosystems of the video game industry, with a strong focus on the game-as-a-service model with titles like World of Warcraft and Hearthstone. He recently joined Mainframe Industries, a start-up studio developing a cloud-native MMO.

Gaetano Dimita is a Senior Lecturer in International Intellectual Property Law at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary University of London, where he teaches interactive entertainment law, interactive entertainment transactions, esports law, and art and intellectual property law. He is the editor-in-chief of the Interactive Entertainment Law Review, the organizer of the ‘More Than Just a Game’ conference series, and a board member of the National Video Game Museum. He is also a member of the Video Game Bar Association, the Fair Play Alliance, and the Higher Education Video Game Association.

Ignacio de Otalora is a passionate leader with 30 years of experience and is currently the Executive Director of DigiPen Institute of Technology Europe-Bilbao, providing market insights and strategic advice, analyzing market trends and challenges, maintaining awareness of the competitive market landscape and expansion opportunities, and leading and overseeing PR, marketing, and promotion. Ignacio graduated in Business Administration and, prior to joining DigiPen, worked for 20+ years at the Bilbao Chamber of Commerce as Director of Studies and Planning and as an auditor of the Basque Court of Public Accounts.

Javier Uriz is a video game industry expert in B2B relationships. He has held international executive positions at Activision Blizzard, working with several AAA franchises such as Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Diablo, Overwatch, Destiny, Skylanders, and Guitar Hero, and recently joined Epic Games to further develop IPs like Fortnite, Rocket League, and Fall Guys in the EMEA region. Passionate about business growth and development of new monetization models, Javier brings together a vast experience in Sales (retail and digital) and Business Development. He has gained an extensive knowledge of the challenges and opportunities across the different regions of the globe leading international sales deals and marketing partnerships that helped the companies reach wider audiences and ultimately grow their revenue and profit lines.

Jean Guerin is the EMEA Director of Community & Engagement at Ubisoft. With a 12-year track record in different digital fields at Ubisoft, from Marketing to Digital TV, Content Creators to Community, and Owned to Paid Media, Jean is a multi-disciplinary industry leader who values the idea that it is less and less about telling the story a publisher wants to tell than about the story players want to hear and that in a highly competitive war on attention between different forms of entertainment, engagement is becoming the most strategic objective.

Jose Rodriguez started as Finance Director at Sony PlayStation Spain during its launch in Europe in 1995. Currently, he leads the IBAM Financial Department (Iberia, Balkans, Adriatic, and MEDS) and is responsible for procurement, compliance, and LB&A (Legislative Budget and Audit Committee) in these territories. In his career at Sony, he has participated in the European design of several ERPs and their subsequent implementation. He managed the set-up and follow-up for Sony PlayStation in Portugal, developing the business model between Spain and Portugal. As a member of the company’s management, he has worked on direct distribution contracts for the BAM region and third parties for Spain and Portugal (Disney and Activision).

Passionate about turning data into actionable insights, Jutta Jakob leads Newzoo’s research and consumer insights projects. As the Head of Consumer Insights, she loves helping clients to shape business and marketing strategies by effectively conducting and leveraging consumer research. Jutta has more than 10 years of experience in market research/consumer insights on both the agency (GfK) and client side, having previously led global research operations at Red Bull.

Kostyantyn Lobov advises on all aspects of intellectual property, advertising, and regulatory issues. Being a litigator by background, he can advise at all stages of a dispute – from early-stage strategy and negotiations to litigation in the High Court and beyond. Kostyantyn has worked extensively with clients in the video game and esports sectors, and he co-chairs the firm’s interactive entertainment group. His wider client base includes brand owners, production companies, tech start-ups, importers and distributors, and various members of the creative industries. Clients range in size from SMEs to multinational corporations with large in-house legal teams.

As Newzoo’s Commercial Director, Michelle Van der Wilk-Rouhof enjoys helping companies to optimize their business with data. As a video games veteran with 15 years of experience working on the publisher side for Activision Blizzard, Michelle knows firsthand how important it is to have access to in-depth market data and insights to make the right strategic decisions.

Philippe Bost is an expert on licensing and consumer products and passionate about brand management, consumer trends, and entertainment. In his current role of Vice President, International Consumer Products at Activision Blizzard, he is driving the brand expansion of IPs like Warcraft, Call of Duty, and Overwatch in Europe, China, and Latin America. With over 20 years of consumer product experience, Philippe has worked in nearly every part of the industry. He has deep expertise in licensing, product development, manufacturing, category management, marketing strategy, ecommerce, and retail execution. Prior to his role at Activision Blizzard, he served in Brazil as Mattel’s Regional Senior Director for South America Consumer Products and as Managing Director for Disney Consumer Products for Spain and Portugal for more than 10 years.

As the Head of Localization, Silvio Clausen runs the localization operations at the Helsinki-based mobile games developer Supercell. He has over 15 years of experience working in the games industry, starting his career at Blizzard Entertainment. At Blizzard, Silvio built a strong foundation of localization knowledge working on projects of large scale and complexity, such as the World of Warcraft franchise. Deciding to take on a new challenge, Silvio joined the Supercell team in 2015 to build their localization infrastructure from the ground up. Since then, he has focused on building a translation pipeline able to adapt and grow with ever-changing demands and finding the best tools to support the translation team. The quest for the perfect infrastructure has driven his passion for knowledge about the latest localization technologies and quality evaluation methodologies.

Tom Wijman is Newzoo’s Games Market Lead. He oversees Newzoo’s efforts for games market sizing, forecasting, and trend watching. An avid gamer himself, Tom ensures Newzoo stays on top of the latest developments in gaming and shapes the conversation around trends.

Tyler Long is the Market Lead of Game Development and Publishing at Newzoo, the world’s leading provider of games and esports data and insights. With over a decade of experience in the games industry with roles in production, operations, and business development at companies such as 2K and The9, Tyler works with Newzoo’s product and commercial teams to help build and further enhance Newzoo’s product portfolio and connect those services to developer and publisher subscribers.

Christoph Thann is a highly experienced video game industry professional and esports veteran with a rich history at Blizzard Entertainment and Ubisoft. As esports associate director, he is in charge of all aspects of Ubisoft esports across multiple titles in the company’s portfolio in the EMEA region. He draws expertise from a wide array of roles throughout his career including project management, operations management, product management, and leadership responsibilities. Thann has produced a wide variety of competitions, leagues, and live events across EMEA. With a focus on esports as a publisher’s tool, he is in a unique position to share his knowledge with aspiring students.