GamesBeat 2015 has a big focus on diversity and gaming’s women leaders

We’re happy to say that we’ll have more women speakers than ever before at GamesBeat 2015, and the topic of diversity will come up often. We consider these 17 all-star women to be one of the attractions that will make our conference unique and a must-attend event for industry leaders.

Megan Gaiser of Contagious Creativity and Daniel Bernstein of Corum Group.
Megan Gaiser of Contagious Creativity and Daniel Bernstein of Corum Group.

In the big picture, we don’t have a lot of women among the whole cast of speakers. But that’s a symptom of the game industry’s own challenges in putting women and underrepresented minorities into positions of leadership. With Gamergate and online harassment, it seems like many would rather shut down the diversity of voices in the industry. But we think that diversity gives us new ideas that make gaming stronger. And our speakers will have their own perspective on how welcoming the game industry can be for women and how to recruit more in the future. We have succeeded in finding gaming veterans and fresh voices alike as our speakers.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.