MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
The first three winners of our Women of the Year Awards are today revealed.
Margaret Pearson, Julie Man and Gabrielle Kent will be honoured with key accolades at our February 19th afternoon event in Central London.
They were selected by the MCV team after persuasive lobbying from the trade – with over 100 people writing in to put forward their top picks from our Top 100 Women in Games list published last month.
We have been overwhelmed by the response to our women in games activity, especially the many inspirational letters of support we received for Margaret, Julie and Gabrielle – they are true leaders in their field and have helped the games business at all levels,” said Michael French, publisher of MCV and Develop.
Short profiles of the three winners can be found below – we’ll be profiling them in-depth after the Women of the Year awards.
You can join us in honouring the achievements of everyone on the Top 100 list plus our three winners of the awards for Creative Impact (Julie Man), Ambassador (Gabrielle Kent), and Pioneer (Margaret Pearson) at the event on February 19th.
Book your ticket here – prices are 65+VAT per ticket and include the pre- and post-event drinks receptions, as well as the ceremony itself.
MCV’s Women in Games activity, including the Top 100 and Women of the Year awards, are supported by event partners Green Man Gaming, OPM Recruitment and Lis Welsh Search & Selection.
Sponsorship opportunities are still available throughout February – contact Alex Boucher, aboucher@nbmedia.com to find out more.
WOMEN OF THE YEAR 2015 – THE WINNERS
MARGARET PEARSON (Winner of ‘Pioneer’ award)
CentreSoft’s Margaret Pearson is an industry veteran in every sense of the word.
Starting out at Nintendo UK in 1987, she joined Philips Media – and when that company bought LeisureSoft, Pearson was introduced to the world of distribution.
In 1999 she joined CentreSoft and has since helped launch three PlayStation consoles and collected multiple awards for the distributor’s achievements.
Joining CentreSoft was the best decision I ever made,” she tells MCV.
JULIE MAN (Winner of ‘Creative Impact’ award)
Once named ‘the friendlyface of EA’, Julie Man’s career reads like a who’s who of the games industry.
Starting out working at Philips and the launch of the CD-I, she went on to hold developer-focused roles at Virgin, EAand Activision.
Since then she’s managed publishing relationships with studios including Lionhead and Creative Assembly, before founding her own agency Marjacq Man, which aims to uphold and fight for the rights of new developers.
GABRIELLE KENT (Winner of ‘Ambassador’ award)
Kent is deputy head of the games department at Teesside University, as well as director of the Animex Festival.
While studying Illustration in 1997, Kent undertook a placement working on Shadowman at Acclaim and realised her future lay in games.
After graduating, she joined the Pitbull Syndicate, going on to develop car racing titles for Accolade, Infogrammes, Atari and Midway.
Following this, Kent spent several years on the committee for the world’s first Women in Games conference.
All of this is a staggering achievement alone, and yet there’s more – Kent often serves as a Games BAFTA juror and writes novels in her spare time. The first in her Alfie Bloom series will be published worldwide by Scholastic this June.
