NZ ESPORTS - Key Persons
Alison Shanks is NZ Olympian #1085, Commonwealth Games Gold medalist and World Champion Track Cyclist.
Alison is heavily involved in New Zealand sport governance and has been a Director of High Performance Sport New Zealand, and Cycling New Zealand and is a current member of the NZOC Athlete Commission and the Oceania representative on the Commonwealth Games Federation Athlete Advisory Commission.
Job Titles:
- Platform and Leagues Associate, LPL
Ashleigh ‘Minxy' Dougal, is one of NZ's top Esports Professional (Rainbow Six Siege) and was the first female Team Captain in LPL competitive play. She is currently Platform and League Associate for Let's Play Live. Ashleigh has experience working within the esports ecosystem and has an extensive background in event management and coordination.
Job Titles:
- Community Grants & Funding Advisor
Belinda owns TenForward Technology Lounge, a specialised after school care and holiday programme that uses gaming as a tool to support social development skills for young people. Belinda is a business and entrepreneurship mentor, and is also on the Board of SkateNZ to support both community and competitive sport.
Belinda has also taken on the role of Community Grants & Funding Advisor in 2022 for NZ Esports.
Belinda owns TenForward Technology Lounge, a specialised after school care and holiday programme that uses gaming as a tool to support social development skills for young people. We enjoy social team gaming on screens with each other, strategising together in the same room and learning better communication skills and teamwork, and also off screen gaming such as D&D and MTG. Our young people are keen to become esports athletes as they get older, and we hope that our grassroots supporting of positive behaviours and attitudes to gaming and other teammates and competitors will create a better environment for everyone to enjoy.
Belinda is a business and entrepreneurship mentor, and is also on the Board of SkateNZ to support both community and competitive sport.
Job Titles:
- Chairman of the New Zealand Game Developers Association ( NZGDA ), Head of Strategy & Business Development at CerebralFix Ltd
Chelsea is Chairperson of the New Zealand Game Developers Association (NZGDA), the national industry body for games and interactive media. She works closely with government, tertiary education, trade organizations, and cross-industry partners to advocate for the game industry. After working in Medtech product development for many years, she decided to pursue her passion for video games, and brought her 10+ years of experience to New Zealand in 2019. She is now the Head of Strategy & Business Development at CerebralFix Ltd, a Christchurch-based game studio that creates mobile and digital location-based experiences for clients like Disney, Universal, DreamWorks, and Pixar.
Conor English is a former independent advisor to the Reserve Bank, chief executive of Federated Farmers and the New Zealand Property Institute and is involved in a number of businesses and boards. His interest in esports was sparked by his children's involvement.
Job Titles:
- Senior Lecturer @ RMIT University
Emma Witkowski is a sociologist and senior lecturer with the game design program at RMIT University, Australia. Her research focuses on networked game cultures, particularly high-performance practices, esports modernisation, and young people's relationships with their organised digital leisure activities. Emma has published widely on esports careers, gender and games, and the institutionalisation of esports, she consults at local, state, and federal levels on esports in Australia and advises for professional esports and sports organisations. Emma is a board member of the Australian Esports Association and Order Esports.
Job Titles:
- Vice President and International Representative
Duane has held senior roles within the gaming industry since 2010. He has worked with publishers including Activision, Bandai Namco Entertainment, Disney Interactive, Electronic Arts, Riot, SEGA and Warner Bros. He is an experienced managing director with a demonstrated history of working in the broadcast media industry. Duane is passionate about the development of esports on a regional and global scale as well as delivering world-class broadcasting content. Outside of the office he enjoys surfing and finds the correlation between the rise of action sports and esports both fascinating and inspiring.
Job Titles:
- General Manager of VictoryUP
Henry Lawton is the general manager of VictoryUP. He successfully launched the Wellington Secondary School league as an official sport in the Wellington region and run the largest high school esports league to date with more than 1,000 students participating nationwide. Henry has a passion for growing the esports scene from grassroots and offers a unique insight into how to successfully engage with esports.
Job Titles:
- Accessibility & Disability Advisor
Kahu is a twitch streamer, model, and Masters of Business Management student who has seen first-hand how the landscape of the gaming world has changed in the 20 years. She is passionate about diversity and inclusion in gaming, and strives to break stereotypes. Through her passion for gaming, Kahu has hosted gaming tournaments, been involved in live tv discussions about the relevance of gaming in the sports industry, was a guest speaker at the Media Design School panel discussing game studies and engineering, and hosted a Ministry of Education funded events series about careers in gaming, streamed to schools across New Zealand.
Job Titles:
- Marketing Executive, Award - Winning Designer, Gaming Enthusiast and Advocate
Layla arrived in Wellington by way of South Africa, and she's a slayer of all things creative and navigates through the labyrinth of life with an astounding toolkit of contrasting talents. By her side is her trusty sidekick, Athena, a 4-year-old female Staffy that travelled 11 554 km to live in a country where sheep outnumber humans.
Being a self-classified multipotentialite translates as being a marketer by trade. The only specialisation Layla has done is choose a druid as my Dungeons and Dragons character class, and that is ironic.
Layla is an award winning graphic designer and over the past 6 years has worked across various fields in marketing. Being a naturally curious creature, she always wants to understand how each piece fits into the puzzle. Her thesis for her Honours degree focused on product placement in video games. The research showed that brands placed in video games created a positive brand association and increased brand loyalty as audiences are immersed in the environment and relate that product with their favourite video game.
Gaming has been a big part of her life from a young age. She watched her mother play Age of Empires and quickly realised why she spent an hour or two most evenings escaping into the game. Layla has been an avid gamer ever since. Layla believes it will take hard work, but with so many passionate people believing in the future of esports in this country, the achievement will soon outweigh the effort.
Paul is the owner of Playtech, a large computer and technology reseller. Paul has had deep roots to the gaming and esports community as one of the largest equipment providers in the space. Paul brings a wealth of community relationships, business acumen and critical perspective to the NZESF.