Women in Games and Interactive Media Virtual Speaker Series

The Nicholson School of Communication and Media's Games and Interactive Media program is offering a Women in Games and Interactive Media virtual speaker series in Spring 2022.

Speakers will discuss how they created careers in games and interactive media, and share advice about preparing for success in an ever-changing field. There will be presentations by a diverse group of dynamic women scholars, entrepreneurs, and games professionals including:

February 4, 1 - 2 p.m.
Alexia Mandeville, lead game designer, Niantic (creators of Pokémon Go)

This talk will go over where Alexia started at UCF, what she learned in the game design program and what she learned in the field. Alexia will focus on the topics she didn't learn in school so students can further prepare themselves to enter the field of game development.

Alexia Mandeville is a game designer that focuses on creating immersive social games. She graduated from UCF with an undergrad in Digital Media and an MS in Modeling & Simulation. She currently works at Niantic and has shipped games and products at Oculus, High Fidelity, and other companies in the Bay area and Orlando, FL.
March 4, 1 - 2 p.m.
Marilyn Salzman, user interface design professional and President, Salzman Consulting

Marilyn Salzman, an experience design strategist and the president of Salzman Consulting, will share insights from her 30-year journey in people-centered and business-savvy experience design. She will reflect on the importance of taking a comprehensive systems approach to design — whether it be for mobile, web, consumer products, business processes, or immersive AR/VR. She will identify some of the techniques she has found particularly useful when creating a vision for new products or experiences.

Marilyn has led UX teams to support a variety of large and small businesses, including Splunk, Salesforce, Cisco Systems, Oracle, GHX, Viator, and Merck. Prior to Salzman Consulting, Marilyn worked at Sun Microsystems, Genomica, US West Advanced Technologies, and the American Institutes for Research, where she designed and evaluated a range of online, consumer, and business products. Marilyn has a Ph.D. and M.A. in Human Factors Engineering and Applied Cognitive Psychology from George Mason University, where she designed and evaluated ScienceSpace, immersive VR systems for teaching science. Marilyn also has a B.S. in Engineering Psychology / Human Factors from Tufts University, where she gained her passion for interdisciplinary and people-centered design.
April 1, 1 - 2 p.m.
Shabnam Staebler, senior technical program manager, Prime Gaming at Amazon
April 22, 1 - 2 p.m.
Tracy Fullerton, experimental game designer, professor, and author of Game Design Workshop