J.D. Witherspoon, YouTube Creator, runJDrun

J.D. Witherspoon a.k.a. runJDrun is an awesome YouTuber/actor/and comedian. He uploads frequent gaming, vlog, and comedy content to his over 480,000 subscribers. He loves games such as Halo, Super Smash Bros, and Street Fighter. He also plays a wide array of different types of games on his channel runJDrun, everything from Triple A titles to Indie/retro classics. He’s also one of the faces on DisneyXD's new show Polaris Primetime and has a few nation commercials (airing now) and if you're ever in Los Angeles you can catch him telling jokes at local comedy clubs such as the Laugh Factory, Comedy Store, and Hollywood Improv.

Alex the Gamerette, YouTube Creator

Alexandra is fascinated by how humans play. Through her Gamerette channel, she explores the collision between how a game developer meant for a game to be played versus how we experience it as players. She lives to break down how we use interactive storytelling to communicate our increasingly complex consumption of politics, romance, social activism, philosophy and more. When she isn't gaming, she's a Senior Producer for Futurism - an advanced science and tech publication. But mostly she's gaming.

Dean Takahashi, Lead Writer, GamesBeat

Dean Takahashi is lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He has been a tech journalist for more than 25 years, and he has covered games for 18 years. He has been at VentureBeat since 2008. 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 and GamesBeat Summit conferences. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Jamil Moledina, Games Strategic Lead, Google

Jamil has 20 years of industry experience, from GDC director to game startup CEO, now leading games partnerships to bring great games to Google platforms. Jamil has worked on games ranging from Tank Nation by Wormhole Games, to Crime City by Funzio, to EA Partners-published titles such as Shank by Klei Entertainment and Brütal Legend by Double Fine Productions. Jamil is also an advisor to various startups and organizations, the writer of Tearing the Sky, a science fiction novel, and is currently working on a new writing project.  

Lina Chen, Co-founder & CEO, Nix Hydra

Lina Chen is the Co-founder & CEO of Nix Hydra, which is a female founded and led company that makes playful mobile products popular with young women. The company's apps are enjoyed by over 20 million people worldwide, with the most popular apps being two pet egg games. They also recently collaborated with Tyra Banks to release the TyTyMoji sticker set app, which reached No 1 in Top Paid iMessage apps. Nix Hydra is based in Los Angeles and is VC-backed by the same investors behind Zynga, Harmonix and Fitbit.

Lina graduated from Yale University and grew up in South Africa.

Sarah Thomson, BD Lead, Indie Games, Google Play

Sarah is focused on indie partners and building the indie community that fuels innovation, diversity and richness on the Google Play Store. Sarah has been working in games for over 10 years, starting her career with an indie games developer based out of Vancouver, Canada. Before coming to Google, she cut her teeth in the console space building the F2P business vertical over at Sony PlayStation for the past 4 years. Sarah has returned to support her true passion- mobile indies and their awesome games!