Womenize! – Inspiring Stories is our weekly series featuring inspirational women from games and tech. For this edition we talked to Maria Wagner, Initiator and General Manager of GamesForest.Club. She highlights the values of building communities and shares challenges of different industries. Read more about Maria in this interview:
Hi Maria! You have managed many different projects across various industries, where did you feel challenged the most?

Each project and work had its challenges, and I loved all of them because those provided me with many opportunities to learn. When I worked within non-governmental or governmental institutions, especially when I led the refugee camp in Berlin, I was challenged by the lack of digital working tools, service-oriented processes, and efficient communication.

Working in target-driven companies, which understand their customers and try to improve their services, inspires me when it comes to number-driven product design, efficiency, and customer-oriented service. Nevertheless, I still did not feel completely satisfied as I always had the personal need to contribute to the bigger picture and do something meaningful. So now being able to marry both worlds and co-create a company, which is number-driven, service-oriented, and supports the games industry to conquer climate change, makes me very happy.

Do you consider the build-up of communities as a vital part of any company’s success?

Yes, definitely. Especially, if we talk about companies within the creative industry. I think it is vital to establish a well-functioning relationship and communication with your customers and fans. Companies, which bring people together and manage to create new lifestyles and cultures, will profit from the feedback and reach their communities provide to them. Nevertheless, an innovative and fun product or service continues to be the key and generally helps to build up communities.

That’s also why GamesForest.Club provides its members and sponsors with tools to engage their communities and customize their digital forests. This and the visual feedback, which GamesForest.Club provides, helps to bring new communities onboard and enhance their contribution to reforestation and conservation.

Could you tell us about the GamesForest.Club initiative?

GamesForest.Club is a non-profit initiative to support the games and creative industries to invest in carbon absorption by planting and protecting forests. We constantly develop innovative tools to enable the games industry to playfully and effectively conquer climate change. It is a club by and for like-minded people, who want to create a global driving force to restore nature.

Using technology, valid data, and fun design, we provide our members and partners with tools that help them and their communities to conquer climate change. I am very thankful for the engagement of over 25 companies, who joined our mission and supported the projects with sponsorships, donations, donation streams, or media coverage already in the first two months. The feedback is amazing and thanks to our members like Miniclip, Goodgame Studios, Matchmade, and many others, GamesForest.Club is growing constantly. Each digital tree within our forest represents a 100€ investment.

Just visit GamesForest.Club and follow the growth.

Thanks for this interview, Maria!

Maria’s links: Maria on LinkedIn │ Maria on Twitter │ GamesForest.Club website │ GamesForest.Club on Instagram

Womenize! – Inspiring Stories Feature by Sophie Brugmann