Womenize! – Inspiring Stories is our weekly series featuring inspirational individuals from games and tech. For this edition, we collaborated with ESBD – eSport-Bund Deutschland e.V. and talked to Clara Dietrich, Team Lead Marketing & Communication at esports player foundation. She speaks about her role in marketing and communications, her transition from performance marketing to esports, and her passion for creating equal opportunities in the esports industry through initiatives like the Equal eSports Initiative. Read more about Clara in this interview:
Hi Clara! What’s a typical day like for you in your role as Team Lead Marketing & Communication, and how do you balance the different aspects of marketing, communication, and team leadership?

A typical day is fast-paced and varied. It usually starts with a team sync by checking all upcoming tasks for the day and distributing them to all team members. I also look at partner activations and see where improvements can be made. Simultaneously, I try to fulfil the needs of each partner by sending out regular updates. Managing relationships with our partners, and stakeholders is key, as well as driving the creative direction for content marketing. Balancing leadership with hands-on work means allocating time for strategic planning, mentoring team members, and ensuring open lines of communication. It’s about knowing when to delegate versus when to step in directly to ensure smooth execution.

What unique skills and experiences from your previous roles have you found most valuable in navigating and succeeding within the esports industry?

Before I joined the esports player foundation, I worked in a performance marketing agency. My biggest client was Sephora, a French cosmetics chain that has now also become very popular in Germany. Of course, cosmetics is a completely different field to esports. Starting with the target group, but also with the goal of achieving the highest possible sales with the products. Of course, we at the esports player foundation have a completely different goal and that is to develop esports talents to become the worlds best players and to act as role model for the community.

With the experience from the agency, performance marketing taught me how to be data-driven and results-oriented, which has been invaluable in esports. Understanding the mechanics of paid media, audience segmentation, and conversion optimization is crucial when working on partner activations, which are to be played out to a target group that is as large as possible, but above all young, in order to create added value there. The subtle difference is that I don’t want to sell products here, but rather tell the stories of our talents and inspire the community.

Also, agency work honed my ability to juggle multiple projects simultaneously while delivering on tight deadlines. This has been crucial for managing campaigns across various platforms in a fast-moving industry like esports.

I am very grateful that I can accompany and tell the stories of our talents today and thus help shape the future of esports. It feels like the beginning of something really big and special.

Can you share a pivotal moment or project during your time at the esports player foundation that highlighted your passion for the industry and solidified your commitment to making an impact in this field?

A pivotal moment was developing together with Deutsche Telekom and SK Gaming the Equal eSports Initiative, which aims to create equal opportunities for underrepresented groups in esports. Seeing the tangible impact of that work—whether it’s a new scholarship for women or non-binary persons in esports or community events like the Equal eSports Cup that spotlight marginalized voices within a League of Legends tournament—has been incredibly rewarding. One project of the Equal eSports Initiative involved organizing a mentorship program that connected our young aspiring female and non-binary talents with our established and representative Equal eSports Council, and the feedback from participants solidified my belief in the transformative power of inclusivity in this industry.

Thanks for this interview, Clara!

Clara’s links: LinkedIn

Womenize! – Inspiring Stories Feature by Madeleine Egger