Meet these Speakers at the next Womenize! event
We’re currently working on our program for this year’s conference on June 3, 2026 in Berlin.
More details will be shared soon, but we’re happy to already announce our first confirmed speakers.
SPEAKERS 2026
Casilda de Zulueta (she/her) is a technical artist, animator and indie developer, co-founder of Achtung Autobahn (for which she leads the development of its current project) and an avid horror-games enjoyer. She takes pride in making game assets run smoothly without sacrificing visual quality, and will animate whatever may fall into her hands. Besides her more than a decade in the field, Casilda has focused her efforts on advocating for a fair and healthier industry as a co-organizer of the FemDevsMeetup.
Session: Not a Syndrome, a System: Who Benefits from When You Feel Like an Imposter?
Mafalda Duarte (she/her) is a Studio Director, Producer, and international community leader with a background in game development, transmedia storytelling, and studio leadership. Formerly Studio Director at Telescope Game Studios in Potsdam, she worked on multiple projects for the “Whale Singer” story universe and an award-winning demo for the new IP “Summer Camp”.
She is the current Chair of IGDA Berlin and a Board Member of IGDA HQ, where she supports global community initiatives and inclusive industry practices. A Women in Games Ambassador since 2020, she has also served as the program’s Coordinator since 2021, ensuring every ambassador is supported with the tools and materials needed to make an impact.
Session: In Between Chapters: Reinventing Yourself When the Path Isn’t Clear
Shelley Graf (she/they) is a creative tech wild card that’s been played in pretty much every industry that art or development has touched, plus a few others on top. She’s a generalist to a T and has helped develop tools for your favourite Movie’s VFX, created little web games for car companies and led teams bringing big cinematic XR experiences to life. Recently, she has embarked on yet another journey, founding the multimedia studio Witchmade together with two of her friends as part of the Press Start program, where she is currently working on a pet for your apple watch!
Session: Be Queer, Make Games – Queer Perspectives on Making Games
Anna Gruzina (she/her) is Product Manager at InnoGames, working on “Heroes of History”, a strategy RPG in mobile gaming.
With 17 years of marketing experience across gaming, entertainment, and publishing, she made a deliberate move into product leadership and now works at the place where user acquisition and product thinking meet. She unpacks what changes, and what surprisingly doesn’t, when you cross that line.
Session: Lost in Translation: What Marketing and Product Get Wrong About Each Other
Ruth Lemmen (she/her) has spent years building bridges between indie studios, institutions, funding bodies, and talent. From shaping international programs and juries to supporting small teams through complex decisions, she brings clarity where things often feel overwhelming. She works as a systemic coach, mediator and consultant for teams, companies and individuals and as a project and program manager, the later mostly with the indie game development scene. She is since its start in 2022 involved in the strategic development and programing of the Indie Games Residency THE RABBIT. She also works as an expert for the European Commission for various European funding programs (Horizon 2020, Creative Europe). Ruth is co-founder and ambassador of Womenize! – a platform that promotes diversity in the fields of tech, games and digital economy. Womenize! has been granted the Women in Games European Advocacy Award in 2019. From 2006-2013, Ruth worked for the Bundesverband Interaktive Unterhaltungssoftware e. V. (BIU), the German Games Industry Association now called game. There she was responsible for the project management division and, among other things, for the strategic development of gamescom, the world’s largest trade fair show for interactive entertainment.
Session: In Between Chapters: Reinventing Yourself When the Path Isn’t Clear
Jaqueline Martin (she/her) is the founder of Gentleland and co-founder of Tinker eG, with a background that bridges technology, business, and game development. With a degree in Computer Science and a thesis focused on the SUP-INF algorithm for Presburger Arithmetic, she began her game industry career as a Unity Store publisher before expanding into publishing, marketing, and product strategy.
Jaqueline has created pitches for real estate agencies, publishers, grants, and startups, consulted Switzerland’s largest music festival on a gamified online platform, and has been credited on 20+ games for art creation and marketing efforts. Jaqueline also served as former CMO for Sacred: Last Pixel of Ancaria, former Art Lead in a mid-sized production of 40+ people, and is currently a lecturer for UI/UX at the German Designschool for Games & Graphics. As a mentor, she has supported developers through IGDX, Stiftung Digitale Spielekultur, and COCONAT.
Dr. Kenneth (Rico) Norwood (they/them) is an American video game researcher, content producer, and part-time lecturer at Tales and the University of Europe for Applied Sciences. They currently reside between Berlin and London. Originally from Houston, Texas, they earned their undergraduate degree in Mass Communications from Xavier University of Louisiana in 2013. That same year, after receiving their B.A., they relocated to Brooklyn, New York, to pursue an M.A. in Media Studies at Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus, which they completed in 2017. Their primary academic focus is the role of Black Queer Art and its disruption of historical narratives through film and video games. They have written extensively on Black video game and film studies as well as Quare theory, with their work featured in publications such as TechRadar, Wired Magazine, The Metro, PinkNews, and other outlets.
Session: Be Queer, Make Games – Queer Perspectives on Making Games
Irene Preuss (she/they) is an Indie Developer and Indie Games Marketing Specialist with 9 years experience in the games industry, currently member of the cooperative Roost Games working on “Cat Cafe Manager 2: Big City Bliss”.
Irene is also PR Director for The Rabbit Indie Games Residency and mentor for the Press Start founding grant. Irene has previously worked at Happy Broccoli Games (“Kraken Academy!!”) and Torpor Games (“Suzerain”, “The Conformist”).
Session: 10 Things You Need to Know to Successfully Release Your Indie Game
Matthias Riemensperger (he/him) is the co-founder and co-CEO of 4bpm, an Indie game studio that received the German federal “Press Start” founding grant. He works as a Technical Animator and Writer and helps shape the project’s creative vision and worldbuilding. Right now, he is developing “Portal to the Cosmobeat”, a narrative-rhythm hybrid. Along with his team, Matthias is dedicated to making games that showcase how the diverse perspectives of their queer and neurodivergent studio influence the stories they tell.
Session: Be Queer, Make Games – Queer Perspectives on Making Games
Anne Sauer (she/her) is a game designer and project manager with a background in media education at Playing History, an independent game studio based in Berlin. Since 2009, she has been developing games primarily for museums and educational institutions. These include the Grimme Online Award-winning game “Herbst ’89” about the Peaceful Revolution in Leipzig, “Spuren auf Papier” about the killing of the sick during the Nazi era, and “Tribunal 45” about the Nuremberg Trials of major war criminals. She is currently working on SPUUUK, a strategic single-player card game in which players build a deck of ghosts based on real historical figures and tactically use their stories in a race to summon spirits.
Session: Create, Play, Iterate: Let’s Make a Game in 90 Minutes
Theresa Schlag (she/her) is a Berlin-based Art Director and Stylised 3D Artist specialising in visual development, handpainted workflows, and real-time production pipelines for games. With over 14 years of experience across game development, interactive media, and education, she combines artistic vision with technical execution to create distinctive stylised worlds in Unity.
Her work focuses on art direction, shader-driven stylisation, and scalable asset workflows that bridge concept, production, and in-engine final look. Alongside freelance work for game studios and interactive projects, she lectures on 3D art, UI/UX, and game production pipelines in Germany.
Valeria Spirande (she/her) is a Producer at Kolibri Games. Working on the flagship game Idle Miner Tycoon, she is responsible for shaping development workflows, building elaborate LiveOps pipelines, and successfully aligning diverse departments with differing goals and processes.
Session: Leading LiveOps: Product, Production, and the Reality of Running a Live Game
Isabella Spitznagel (they/them) is a concept artist and illustrator specialising in character and costume design and co-founder of Achtung Autobahn, a Berlin-based indie studio. After working as a copywriter in marketing, they pivoted to a career in the games industry, mainly working with indie studios as a freelancer. They became a member of the FemDevsMeetup organizational team in 2024 to help with meetups in Berlin.
Session: Not a Syndrome, a System: Who Benefits from When You Feel Like an Imposter?
Olivia Trigg-Simpson (she/her) Olivia is a Senior Product Manager at Kolibri Games. Spearheading LiveOps for Idle Miner Tycoon, she specializes in the delicate art of maintaining a “forever game”, with expertise in designing engaging events, optimizing LiveOps schedules, and building impactful monetization.
Session: Leading LiveOps: Product, Production, and the Reality of Running a Live Game
Kelly Vero (she/her) has been crafting a career in game development and tech for 30 years, she has worked on some of the world’s most famous franchises.
Working at the top flight of video games has presented an increasing demand for understanding the gamification of concepts in other verticals from fashion to entertainment. She loves pushing technology to its emergent edge through education, sustainability, and imagination. Kelly works around these verticals to educate, produce and develop the growth of new technologies in a changing world from the metaverse and NFT to AI, hardware and trust. Kelly has worked on a wide range of games: including the Tomb Raider series, Transformers and Candy Crush; she has worked with Adidas, Fila, Puma and on various LVMH projects for gamified products and services and more recently was the technical co-founder of the world’s first metaverse for children: Aequaland.
In October 2021 Kelly produced the first standard for NFTs in luxury and art and is the founder and CTO of direct-to-avatar digital assets startup NAK3D working with luxury brands, games and metaverses across g-commerce and technology. Kelly has written three books revolving around technology published by Bloomsbury and Routledge: Breaking Through Bytes focuses on women in technology, How Video Games Made the Metaverse is about using game technology to make lasting experiences and Myth Made Machines follows the cultural journey of AI in films, tv, music and games.
Session: You Are Not Your Job Title: The Transferable Power of Game Makers
Candela Ayala Vizán (she/her) is part of the Partner & Influencer Marketing squad, where she crafts campaigns that hit different. Her mission: make sure creators have an awesome time streaming and building content around Gameforge titles, while keeping the community vibes strong and alive.
She first joined Gameforge back in April 2011 as part of the Community Management crew, diving deep into player support and becoming a familiar presence for communities across “Ikariam”, “OGame”, “Metin 2”, and more.
In 2022, she leveled up into the Partner & Influencer team, where she now helps creators thrive, builds cool collabs, and opens up new opportunities for anyone passionate about Gameforge games. Think of her as a bridge between the games and the people who bring them to life.
Session: Behind the Hype: What it Really Means to Manage Communities
Leonie Wolf (she/her) is a Berlin-based project and event manager for Indie Arena Booth at Super Crowd. She has extensive experience in the games industry, working as a Technical Animator and Associate Art Director in game development for many years. Beyond her artistic work, she regularly hosts major events in the games scene and is deeply committed to advocacy. She supports marginalized groups as a mentor, speaker, and organizer. Since 2019 she’s been with FemDevsMeetup and co-founded GAME:IN in 2022 to promote inclusion and diversity.
Session: Not a Syndrome, a System: Who Benefits from When You Feel Like an Imposter?
More speakers will be announced soon! Subscribe to our newsletter to get notified!
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We come from Kreuzberg, Berlin, and develop brands, curate programs and execute them on-site. It’s like thinking with a thousand heads and speaking with a thousand mouths. Online networks, start-ups, developers, politics, media and cultural leaders come and listen. We are experts for Kickstarter. We do love this shit.
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