The Final Issue of People on the Move With AFK Gaming
I have some bittersweet news to report: this will be the last edition of People on the Move associated with our friends at AFK Gaming. Our experiment over the last four months with AFK comes to a close this week, and I greatly appreciate the support of the entire team. Vignesh Raghuram, Nishant Patel, and the entire AFK crew have been incredibly supportive of our newsletter experiments over these last few months, and even though we are parting ways and charting different courses, I will continue to champion their excellent work and root for their continued success–which is the long way of saying that they we will continue to be friends for the rest of our days. Thank you AFK and our readers!
So what’s going to happen to People on the Move after this week? Well I’m going to take over the newsletter completely. The format will remain the same, but it will no longer require a subscription (and it will remain free for as long as I decide to continue writing it). If you are a fan of this newsletter I encourage you to sign up at peopleesports.substack.com (you can also sign up for my other newsletter, The Fudge Retort at jamesfudge.substack.com). Finally, thank you to everyone who supported People on the Move on AFK–without you there’s no point to all of this hard work.
With that out of the way, let’s get into this week’s biggest moves in esports and gaming!
- James Fudge.
Movers & Shakers
Nigma Galaxy announced the appointment of former Rix.GG CEO and Fnatic Head of Team Operations Jan Hoffmann as its new head of operations. Hoffmann will be responsible for “all operational aspects of Nigma Galaxy,” according to a release.
Jessey Finizio joins Texas-based esports organization Complexity Gaming as its new vice president of sponsorship sales. She sjoins from Twitch where she spent more than a year as director of client strategy at the streaming platform. Prior to that she served in similar roles at Vice Media, Turner Broadcasting System, Everyday Health, PureWow, and Refinery29.
Andrea Dela Cruz will be joining Los Angeles-based esports organization 100 Thieves at the beginning of August as the new product marketing manager for its Higround division. Dela Cruz joins the company from Square Enix America, where she spent nearly three years handling product marketing for Japanese titles and retail. Prior to that she worked for Skechers in similar product marketing roles for over a year.
Lisa Alexander has joined Reddit Gaming as its new senior client partner. Alexander joins the company after just six months serving as sales director for media & entertainment at LG Ads Solutions. Prior to joining that company she worked for Imgur for more than fours years in various executives sales roles, nearly four years at Turner Broadcasting Systems, and nine months at MTV Networks.
Anthony King, Jr. joins Discord as its new senior manager of global partnerships. King joins from Twitch where he spent more than four years in partnership and developer relations roles. He also co-founded New York-based Nebulous Esports Management in 2014, where he learned in the trenches about securing partnerships and sponsorships during his three years there.
People on the Move
Here is this week’s list of promotions, hires, and departures in the gaming/esports industry:
Matthew King has been promoted to the role of director of esports at NJCAA Esports.
Aliana Miller joins Roblox as its new director of influencer marketing.
Former 100 Thieves exec Jeremy Azevedo and REMEZCLA exec Jeremy Azevedo join Loaded's new development studio Open World.
Will Siderys has been promoted to the role of music partnerships manager at Discord.
Robert Wei announces his exit from Free Fire maker Garena and his role as producer of original entertainment content.
Lee Cramp rejoins the Esports Awards as business development manager–the last time he worked for the company was in 2021.
Jordan Trabue exits his role as chief revenue officer at Unified.
Aftershock Media Group has promoted Monique Higgins to the role of lead talent manager.
Simon Gamboa leaves his role at TikTok to join Meta (Facebook) as its new client solutions manager for gaming.
Keith Colton has joined Activision Blizzard to serve as senior director of strategy & operations for ABK Mobile partnerships.
Ivona Novak has joined EA Sports as development director–with a focus on its soccer games.
Geoff Bennett has been promoted to the role of technical SEO manager at Entain.
Jay Carney exits Amazon, leaving behind his role as the top public relations and public policy executive.
Ryan Gmerek is promoted to the role of VP of new business sales at YouGov.
Jesica O'Black joins Activision Blizzard as a test analyst.
Sean Bamberger leaves his role of director of project planning at Sega Europe to join Ninja Theory as its new "senior business operations ninja."
Thomas Pae joins Electronic Arts as its new senior director of global growth & engagement marketing.
Harris Wang leaves his role as business director of GCR gaming at Meta (Facebook) to launch a new blockchain gaming company called Threepeat.
Pourushasp Mehta is promoted to the role of communications manager at Red Bull India.
Scott Daryl Hadjiril joins Nigma Galaxy as its new content lead.
Thamizh Chelvan exits PlayTonia eSports to rejoin The Esports Club as its new senior broadcast producer.
Hailey Gronquist has signed a contract with Gamer Advantage to fill a partnership manager role–she will continue working for Cinch Gaming as well.
Kaitlyn Retner leaves G FUEL to join Mohegan Sun as a product operations specialist for digital gaming.
Shadi Nayyer is promoted to the role of head of community for North America at TikTok.
After being laid off from InvenGlobal earlier this month, Samantha Nye finds a new home at Moonrock Agency as social media manager.
Brian Kuhn exits Halo maker 343 Industries to join Blizzard Entertainment as its new technical lead, principal I.
Jordan Abousaada is promoted to the role of video operations manager at Meta (Facebook).
Lily Kim is promoted to the role of software engineer at Activision Blizzard as part of its Level Up U program.
Daniel Minukhin takes on a new role as Python developer at Bayes Esports.
In Case You Missed it
Riot Games gets greenlight from judge to pay out $100M to settle gender discrimination cases.
Adam Fitch talks to Dexerto’s Ross Deason about the state of esports media in his latest podcast for Hitmarker.
Google cools on hiring for a bit.
U.S. tech companies begin severing ties with China as the government gets ready to strike.
Warner Bros Discovery announces the exit of eight veteran staffers.
How CEOs can do their part to advance racial equality.
Tencent exec: China needs to fill two million esports jobs over the next four years.
Bahrain-based female esports player Maryam "Mary" Maher joins G2 Esports as part of the G2 GOZEN roster.
Shopify laid off about 1,000 workers, or 10% of its global workforce this week.
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Want to highlight your latest hire? Looking to promote a new job opening? Drop me a line at jamesbfudge@gmail.com with the subject line “People on the Move.”