Career Growth Advice from Christina Seelye, Video Gaming Leader | Career Tips for Women in Video Gaming

2B Bolder Podcast – Episode 72
Featuring Christina Seelye, CEO of Maximum Games & Zordix

Episode Title: #72 Career Podcast Featuring Christina Seelye a complete ROCK STAR in the GAMING Industry: Women In Business

Host: Mary Killelea
Guest: Christina Seelye



Mary Killelea (Host): Hi there. My name is Mary Killelea. Welcome to the To Be Bolder podcast, providing career insights for the next generation of women in business and tech. To Be Bolder was created out of my love for technology and marketing, my desire to bring together like-minded women, and my hope to be a great role model and source of inspiration for my two girls and other young women like you. Encouraging you guys to show up and to be bolder and to know that anything you guys dream of, it's totally possible. So, sit back, relax, and enjoy the conversation.

Hi there. Thanks for tuning into the show. My name is Mary Killelea and I'm the host today, and I am joined by Christina Seelye. Christina is the founder and CEO of Maximum Games and the CEO of Zordix. Maximum Games is a top 20 North American full-service video game publisher and distributor with over 300 titles in its catalog. Zordix is a global video game development and publishing company. Its specialist talents include design, animation, 3D modeling, programming, web, marketing, sales, and CRM. Zordix is developing games for release at retail, as well as the digital download channels across Nintendo, PlayStation, Xbox consoles, and PC. Christina is a skilled entrepreneur in the video games and technology industries, as well as global products, digital transformation, and advancing startups. Christina is the recipient of numerous awards, including Executive of the Year from the American Business Awards in 2015 and Female Entrepreneur of the Year from the Stevie's Award for Women in Business in 2015 and 2018. In 2020, she was also recognized by the Women's President Organization as part of its yearly Women to Watch list. Christina, thank you so much for being here.

Christina Seelye (Guest): No problem. Thank you for having me.

Mary Killelea: You're welcome. Okay. I'm excited about this conversation. I am sure a lot of our listeners are quite intrigued with your expertise in the gaming business. I know I am. We would love to hear about your career journey, how you got started, and kind of, the path to which led you today.

Christina Seelye: Awesome. Awesome. Well, usually when people ask me about how I got into gaming, I say I'm a nationally ranked Fortnite player. And you can tell how people respond to that, of how knowledgeable they are about the video game industry. Because if you saw me in real life and met me, you would know that there is no possible way that I am a nationally ranked Fortnite player. And so whenever I say that, kids always laugh really hard. And then other women that look like me go, you are? Congratulations! And I'm like, no, I am not. And so, but honestly, how I got into this industry is that I've always really loved consumer technology. I live in Northern California. So kind of by osmosis, I live the world of technology here. And so, my whole career has really been around consumer technology and bringing consumer technology to market and selling that through channels. And the video games, when I started this company, it was just really another piece of consumer technology. But now I've really come to love the creativity and the complexity and the artistry that goes into every game that we launch. And so I really love it.

I started out as a music major at Sonoma State University. And I really thought I was going to be a rock star. And clearly that did not work out. And so here I am making video games, which is pretty fun.

Mary Killelea: That's an equivalent of a rock star in some people's world.

Christina Seelye: Sure. Sure. Yeah. Usually people say, oh, you're your kids must think you're so cool. And I say, my kids don't, but my kids' friends do.

Mary Killelea: Yes, exactly. So what are some of the pros and cons of being a woman in the gaming industry? I mean, you've seen it evolve, obviously.

Christina Seelye: Yeah. Yeah. With Gamergate and a lot of the different things that you hear all about in the video game industry is a tough one. It's a tough one for men and women. It's a lot of the pressure of development, the pressure of a development against a timeline, plus the fact that everybody plays video games now. And so, the pressure of pleasing gamers and making sure they get good reviews and good metacritics and all of that kind of stuff. There's a lot of pressure within this industry for both men and women. I would say it's especially difficult for women just because of the few numbers of women that are in the industry. And I'm specifically talking about the business side of the industry, because from a gamer standpoint, from a player standpoint, it's actually 50-50. There's a lot of women playing games and men playing games. In fact, the average age of a video gamer is 38.

Mary Killelea: Wow.

Christina Seelye: It's way older than you think it is. And everybody plays games. And in fact, it's just that how they identify as a gamer is very different. So like a woman, she would not identify as a gamer unless she played games five days a week. Whereas like a man can play games one day a week and identify as a gamer, describe himself as a gamer. And so one of the difficulties for women in this space is that there's a lot of women, but they don't talk about it. They're all playing games, but they're not identifying as a gamer. And there's very few women actually working in the industry, which creates a problem of normalization of women in the industry. They're not seeing other people like them in executive level positions within the company. They're not seeing other women like them out in public talking about video games. And I think that that's one of the things for us. And for me is really important for me to be out there and be visible and kind of normalize women being in this industry.

Mary Killelea: There's so many nuggets there. So, let's talk about the opportunities within the gaming world from a career standpoint. I know that you were saying there's a lack of role models, but not even knowing what the opportunities are sometimes half to battle too.

Christina Seelye: So, the video game industry is gigantic. So no matter what you want to do, there's a place for you within the video game industry. And that's true if you were into marketing or if you're in sales or if you're a developer or if you are an office manager or a real estate broker of new places, the industry is so big that there is a place for you within this industry no matter what it is. To give you an idea, if you take all of TV, all of movies, all of music, all of books, you add all of that together, add 50%, that's the size of the video game industry. It's gigantic. And people don't realize it because they think it's just people in their basements playing games, but that's not what's happening. So, when you look at what you can do within this industry, you really have all of your kind of standard roles as far as like sales, marketing, administration, and all of that kind of stuff. But then you also have all of the technology roles of developer and project manager and all of the kind of things that you would normally see in a software or a technology company.

But then additionally, what you have is a huge amount of artists. And so there is like on an enterprise software development team, you might have 10 engineers, 10 developers, and you would have two or three artists. In video game world, that's like flip-flopped. So you would have 10 artists that are also developers because they're very high-end technical artists. But then you would only have like three straight programmers. And so, there's a really a huge opportunity for anybody who's really into art and who wants to create games. There's a place for everyone.

Mary Killelea: I love that. Is there like on-the-job training to keep up with the tech? Because I'm sure it's so, you know, fast-paced as far as, you know, the progression and innovation.

Christina Seelye: Yeah, exactly. It's a highly innovative industry. And when you hear everybody batten around these words right now today, like virtual reality, augmented reality, AI, all of these innovative tech technologies that we're talking about today are actively being used in video games. So, if you are working in this industry, your on-the-job training is everything that you're learning to just even get your daily tasks done. It's a difficult industry in that you have to be very change-comfortable, right? Because the industry is moving so fast that even if we provided this phenomenal level of company training to onboard you into the organization, if you're not learning as you go, you're going to fall behind really fast because the technology and the industry moves so fast. If you talk to the people who worked at Maximum Games, we shipped our first game in 2010. If you talk to anybody who's been here for like long time, more than five or six years, they would tell you that they feel like they've worked for a different company every 18 months because it's just moved so fast. We're learning so much that like on-the-job training is constantly happening.

In fact, one of the core values of our business in particular of Maximum Games and Zordix, the company, the parent company, and I'll talk a little bit about that too, is being an avid learner because what we found is that the people who are happiest here and the people who are most successful in this industry just had a predisposition to learning things and we use that in our interviewing, we use it in promotion track and leadership track because the industry is moving so fast that you really have to be a learner in order to kind of keep up.

Mary Killelea: You know, you touched on something great because I think women listening need to realize that skills that they have can be transferable based on that mindset of having that growth mindset or having the comfortableness with ambiguity, that those are real strengths.

Christina Seelye: Absolutely, they are strengths and I think that when you look at those, I just had a conversation earlier this week with somebody who wanted to transition into the video game industry and we went through their CV, their resume, and we talked through all of the different experiences that they had had in the industry that they were from and how those would transfer into the video game industry because the video game industry is technology that is for consumers that is entertainment focused and is sold through channels. There's a lot of people whose jobs today you can grab on to one of those components and be able to talk about how it's relevant for the industry and that's especially true for women.

One of the things that I always say is that what we need in the company, I say this all the time, we need event planners because even though we're not having an event, those same skill sets that you would use to create and launch an event are exactly the same kind of skill sets for launching a game because it's a set of dependencies that all have to come together in a certain order in order to drive to one date and I'm like, get a wedding planner to do this because they are totally the people who know how to navigate and corral all the cats because you can't change that date because we're getting married on this day. So it's part of the industry. There's a lot of transferable skills is my point there.

Mary Killelea: Yeah and that's great that you also made me think of it because in my role I work on campaigns and then there's like kind of always on advertising but what I hear you saying is like their specific launch dates.

Christina Seelye: Yeah, there is. So in many ways video games is very similar to how a movie is launched or a tv show is launched. There's a date we're creating buzz driving to that date that you know the next Marvel movie is going to come out or Black Panther is coming out or the next you know House of the Dragons or whatever. We all know what that date is and we're driving towards it. Last week God of War launched and everybody like literally we had people here that just took two days off because God of War launched and they wanted to go home and play it and so we're driving to a date in the same way and all of our campaigns, all of the buzz creation, everything kind of drives to that date but for the three years before that date that you were developing the game was also driving to that date. And so that's kind of how it works internally and so there's a lot of there's a lot of people who have transferable skills that will work and not.

Mary Killelea: I love this. So, what's one insight that you think professional young in their careers need to hear or might be overlooking?

Christina Seelye: Well this is not necessarily related to video games. This is just what I'm experiencing with people when they're first entering the workforce is and I don't know if we put this pressure on kids or if they're putting it on themselves as they enter in the workforce. I'm not really sure, but I feel like they have to decide what they're good at before they know what they're good at. And we force them into a major or what you know we ask them questions like what do you want to do instead of asking them questions like what do you enjoy or how are you bringing value to the world? We're asking them these questions in a way that they have no idea they don't know what they're good at yet, and I think that the biggest insight is just try things. Try things, try different positions in different parts of the organization because you might think that you really want to be in sales but you're actually way better suited for marketing or maybe you think you want to be in marketing but actually you're really a great project manager and you would be better suited in development because you really can you know understand how to corral the cats you know and organize a great project. I think that the insight I would provide is like don't decide too early. Go try.

And then the questions I would ask is actually more around where am I adding value? Where you know and asking that of your manager and asking that of your peers like what do I really help out with? What do you think that I'm good at? Because I think that you're going to be happiest and you're going to do your best work when you're bringing value.

Mary Killelea: Yeah absolutely. Can you share a lesson learned from a pivotal moment in your own personal career where you felt like okay this is a moment I'm having it?

Christina Seelye: There's been so many. There's been so many, both good and bad. There's a lot of things that you learn from failure and then there's a lot of like pivotal moments that happen because you did something really well. I think that very early in my career I remember the moment. I remember the woman I was with who was my mentor and my boss at the time and I realized that I was really good at what we then called business development. We sat in a meeting and we listened to what the executive on the other side of the table was saying their issues were and it was not part of our presentation. It wasn't what we were going in there to sell. And this was pre-video games. I was selling internet security at that time and I just learned that I could sit there and listen to somebody's issue and then figure out all the different ways that the internet security software that I was working for at the time could address these issues within that company. And my mentor and boss at the time she and I with no previous experience doing this and we did not organize this and before the meeting we just played off each other in that meaning to come up with a new plan on the fly that was very specific to expand the business and I realized that that was kind of what I was really good at. I was really good at expanding the business opportunity and I was very young in that position. That was like very early in my career, but what I did was I took that and said okay how can I take the skill of expanding the opportunities of revenue to other areas. And that's kind of where I ended up being more of an entrepreneur because what I was really good at is growing something and finding all the different ways to create revenue from one idea or one piece of content and it's still what we're doing today. As a video game company we are looking for how do we expand the world of video games outside of the traditional video game channels and we're doing things like selling video game soundtracks on vinyls, we're creating merchandise and doing collector's edition around the same piece of content that we created for video games So that like pivotal moment of understanding how to expand content into different revenue channels even though that content was like internet security and not very exciting, it has really informed all of the growth over all of the other entrepreneurial you know companies that I started.

Mary Killelea: A couple things that you said in there one the fact that you acknowledged that you can learn from failures I think is so important because some people are scared to admit failure whereas I think they need to be able to embrace failure and fail forward fast.

Christina Seelye: You know who's really good at embracing failure? Who? Gamers. You know why? Because you fail all the time in a game and I talk about this all the time internally to our team here is that reminding them they already have the skill of how to manage failure because when you're playing a game and you die, you do not stop, you don't get sad and go sit in a corner and not talk to anybody. I mean sometimes you do if you're really tilted, but most of the time that failure… You actually not only are excited and motivated to try again but you are very aware of the mistakes that you made and how are you going to do this differently the next time you try. Because now you know that that guy has a sword around that corner, so I need this weapon or I need to turn this direction in order to clear this level. So just having those moments of conversation with people especially within the workplace to say hey listen you already know how to fail forward, you fail forward every day when you're playing. And then all of a sudden they realize the power of failure, the power of learning that you have because if you just could run through a game the first time and clear all the levels, it wouldn't be fun. You know part of the reason is that you fail all the time and you get to learn from it.

Mary Killelea: That is an awesome metaphor I love that I've never thought of that before but it just rings so true.

Christina Seelye: Another thing that is in the same idea of that people have all of these skill sets that they don't realize they have from being a gamer that they can apply at work. One of the things that happened to me is my oldest son actually worked here, he works here now, but he worked here before in a role and we were walking around. He walked up to me in the office and said hey I leveled up today and I was like oh yeah what were you playing he was like no, no I leveled up at work I was like what? And he goes yeah I did. I completed a localization pass which is this process of taking language out of the game getting it localized into other languages, putting it back into the game and testing it. He had completed that game loop of doing that, and the feeling that it had within him was the same feeling he has when he clears a level. And I thought that was really fascinating that if we could take the tasks that we have and the things that we have to learn at work, and look at it with a gamer's lens and say oh what I'm doing here is bringing out all of these skills to this project so that on the other side of it, I feel like I leveled up. And it's just another way of talking to people about how you read all of these books about how to succeed at work and all of that kind of stuff, and different leadership books and different career advice books. And I'm like you know be a gamer at work.

Mary Killelea: I think you need to write a book in your future. How life related to gaming.

Christina Seelye: Exactly, exactly.

Mary Killelea: What are some of your career highlights?

Christina Seelye: I think that really it's probably been this past year of selling. So I founded Maximum Games in 2010 is when we shipped our first game and then I sold it last year at the end of December to a publicly listed company in Sweden, and on the other side of that transaction I actually became CEO of the publicly listed company in Sweden at the end of February of 2022 just earlier this year. And that puts me in a unique situation in that there are only two female CEOs of publicly listed companies in the video game industry. Only two – me and this woman Debbie Bestwick who lives in the UK who's fantastic. So I think that was kind of a really important career highlight for me, not just of kind of selling my company and going through that process, but creating a path where women are in a position within this industry, where we're making decisions, we have influence, we get to decide what games are funded and what games we bring to market. And we really have the opportunity for change.

Mary Killelea: That's amazing, congratulations. That is a huge accomplishment. Let's go back because I'm fascinated by how you had the not nerve, but the confidence that the nerve to start your own business.

Christina Seelye: Well most of it is because I'm unemployable. And that's what I always say is that I am not a good employee. In fact I quit a job early in my career because there was a dress code and I think they wanted us to wear like a nylons or pantyhose or something, and I was like oh no I'm not doing that. Luckily I ended up in the video game industry in northern California where we can just only wear hoodies and tennis shoes. I'm not like risk tolerant at the same level as like the free solo guy. His level of risk tolerance is really crazy, but I do have a pretty high tolerance for risk. So the combination of a high level of risk tolerance and an unhealthy belief in my own ability to get things done is what is probably true of almost all entrepreneur types.

Mary Killelea: How have you personally overcome or practice overcoming self-doubt?

Christina Seelye: That's a good one. I mean I think that women talk about self-doubt all the time and imposter syndrome and all of those kind of things. I think that it's actually true of both men and women. I think that deep down men have those same kind of insecurities whether or not they are comfortable talking about that in the same way that women are is probably a conversation for a different time. But I mean we've all been there. We all are nervous about the decisions that we're making, but I'll tell you what. I have met people all over the world that are all running businesses and I've met a lot of people who I thought were in very high positions making really big decisions, and after I talked to them for a couple minutes I'm like yeah I got this. And so I think that when people have self-doubt they should just remind themselves of conversations they've had over the course of their life and then they'll realize that they're going to be just fine.

Mary Killelea: Yeah I always think of the old saying like everyone puts on the pants the same way you know like no one's better than the other it might be that they're just putting the gas on a little stronger than the other, but everyone has it within themselves somehow to find it. So back to Maximum Games when you started that business how did you set out to differentiate yourself from the competition?

Christina Seelye: Yeah. When you talk to most entrepreneurs, they will all tell you that most of them did not set out to create the company that they ended up running. Most of the time you're starting a company because there was a demand for a service or a product you could provide, and that's not very sexy. But at the same time, that's actually how it works. I think that even if you go through entrepreneurial classes within masters programs, or sometimes you can major in that in college now what they're always telling you is actually to find the gap. Go find the gap of the product or service that is needed and then fill that and your company you know kind of blossoms from there. And that is 100% the truth of how Maximum Games started and how we and how we differentiated.

Basically, how the company started is that there was video game content that had launched in Europe that had not launched in the US. So there was this gap of product that was already done, content that already existed, no additional money needed to be put into that content in order to launch it here. But Walmart wasn't carrying it, Target wasn't carrying it, and this was back in the days of like Nintendo DS and 3DS where you had to buy the card, there was no downloading that content. You had to go buy them in stores and people in the US weren't able to get that content. So we cut some deals in order to bring that to market here, and then we just continued to grow and expand the company to doing everything that we do today.

So when we started, we only worked with already done content. We didn't have any developers. It actually started in my house and my actual refrigerator was our office fridge, and we had like eight people working in the house at one point. My bathrooms were disgusting because there was too many people there every day. And from that point on we just moved to become involved in the projects earlier and earlier. Ultimately where we are today where we have studios all over the world who are creating content, and we're launching that content all over the world.

Mary Killelea: That's amazing. Walk us through like the acquisition process. How did that go?

Christina Seelye: Yeah, that was crazy. I had sold a previous company. Maximum Games is not my first company, it's actually my fourth. I’ve had multiple companies within consumer technology and specifically bringing games to retail and bringing consumer technology through digital channels, and things like that I've been doing that for a long time. And Maximum Games is just the latest one. So when we had reached the point in like kind of 2020-2021, where we realized that without additional capital, because we had completely self-funded the company from start until the time that we sold, what we realized is that the kind of games we wanted to work on and the kind of projects we wanted to do were actually, we were always profitable. But we didn't have enough free cash to invest in a game because games take about two to three years to make. So we were like in order for us to move to the next level, in order for us to get a lot bigger, we're either going to have to raise money or get acquired and merge with someone else to take us to the next level.

And so that was just an interesting point to realize that this is the right answer for the next growth phase, and so we started looking around for who would be the right partner. And we were really good publishers so we were really good around selling products all over the world, but we only had a few developers and studios creating content. Zordix, the publicly listed company in Sweden, had a lot of studios. And they had a lot of content and they were looking for more publishing expertise, so it was a really good merge of skill sets and people where they had a lot of studio content and we had a lot of publishing chops to launch games around the world. So we thought it'd be a good mix to put us together, and went through that whole process. And then became CEO of the whole thing on the other side which is really exciting and it's really great to work with people all over the world.

So we have studios in Hungary, in Brazil, in Sweden, in the US and then we have sales and marketing teams in France and in the UK and here in the US. I really get to work with a lot of amazing cultures and amazing people, and video games are one of the most global forms of entertainment when you look at tv, movies, music. Although there are some that become global, most of the time entertainment is pretty regional and video games are is an exception to that. We make a video game, it's sold everywhere, all over the world. So it's really fun to work on it with a global mindset and worldview every day.

Mary Killelea: I absolutely love that someone of your stature at the company CEO level takes the time to come on a show like this and share your expertise and just insights, like real conversations about the industry that most people wouldn't have access to. I'm curious when you're creating a new game is it like someone come in and pitch you?

Christina Seelye: Yeah that's a good question. It works a couple different ways. So one of the ways is people come and pitch us their games, and so that's very much like the movie industry or tv industry where you go. And in fact we call it the same thing, we call it the green light process. It’s the same thing. We get something that looks like a script. It's not all the words, but it's like a shortened version of what the script of the game would look like, we usually have some concept art, in some cases we have a prototype to show what the game mechanic is going to be or what the game loop is going to be. There's usually something called a GDD which is like the full script which is a game design document. These are the kind of things that we get pitched. That content, all of that stuff comes in and we have a guy that manages that funnel, and so it all comes in and then he plays it all and looks at it all and it gets consolidated. And then it gets pitched to the green light team every week Thursdays at 8 a.m.

And then we listen to that and go through it, and we compare it against what we already have in our roadmap and things like that. That's one of the ways.

Another way is kind of with our own studios, and that's a little different that one is really more on what does that studio have a really specific skill set at doing, what are they interested in building? What genre of games do we want to play in and where do we want to lead? What area do we feel like we can be really competitive and make money? And so for our internal studios, that is a very rigorous process. That's looking at each studio has a game, that has a pnl that we know how we're going to make it and what we're looking for there is can we really make a difference in this genre, can we lead in this genre with something really interesting? And so we have about 11 games in development right now, between all of our different studios and they really kind of cover a lot of different genres. From fighting games to sports simulation to a narrative adventure, so we have a lot of different genres that we're developing within our studios.

Mary Killelea: As a woman CEO, are you mindful of heroines within the stories?

Christina Seelye: Yeah, one of the things that was funny. A couple years ago when we had a roadmap and I think we were at GDC which is big video game conference in San Francisco. And a reporter asked me, she's like are you purposeful with all of your games in your roadmap this year have female protagonists? And I was like they do? I didn't even know. Ireally didn't know. And what was funny about that to me is that it shows the importance of women being in the room when you're making those decisions. Because women being in the room when we were making all of those decisions based on the quality of the game and what we liked, and we didn't have any bias around it being a woman protagonist. We just were looking at the game. And so it shows you the difference a little subtle things that bias can do, that you would look at that and notice it and we didn't even notice. Afterwards we're like oh yeah is.

Mary Killelea: It’s so important to have women in the room for sure. I read once that you said establishing goals that promote personal growth are critical. How do you go about setting your own goals?

Christina Seelye: So my own goals or for the team? I mean I’m super goal oriented, obviously. I think that I have every year, I have goals to make and I’m not afraid to write them down. Even if I don't meet them, I’m totally fine with it because I just like the process of casting it out loud and things like that.

But when I think about goals, I think about how important it is to set that up for my team and for the people that I’m working with and create an environment where they are meeting, and reaching, and exceeding their own goals. Not just the objectives of the business, but also what are they trying to accomplish. And we have had multiple times over the past 10 years, where we've had to reorganize because the business had shifted and it was different and the skill set we needed was different, and we had to have those hard conversations with people. And a lot of the ways you can successfully navigate that and successfully have those conversations is having a mindset of people meeting reaching and exceeding their goals, so that they can do their highest, best work. If we are not structured in a way that they can do their highest, best work, then maybe it's not a good fit for them anymore to work here. So it's actually a great way to have conversations with people to continue on in their career internally, but also sometimes to have the conversations that you're not going to meet your goals here and you're not going to be able to exceed your own personal expectations here because the business has shifted and the skill set is different that we need. So it's just important to think about goals, personal and career and work goals, because it can help you in in good times and in bad times. It can help you decide to stay within a career and a job, and it can help you decide to move on

Mary Killelea: Yeah absolutely. You said something earlier that surprised me, and that was that 50 percent of gamers are women. That number really shocked me. Talk to me about women in games international.

Christina Seelye: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So first let's talk about like women playing games. What i'm saying is that there's just as many men playing at playing games as women are playing games. Is it 50 50 on call of duty? No. Is it 50 50 on candy crush? No. So words with friends, maybe? I don't know. You know what I mean? There's such gigantic, broad, different games and game genres that are out there in the world that there are women and men playing all of those games. Sometimes we have in our mind that being a gamer means that you're just sitting there in front of a controller and going like this, and so the there's not equal um men and women playing games across all genres. It's just like overall in the industry playing games is what i'm saying.

And then also for women in games international. I’m on the board of that organization and we work very specifically with women who want to continue in their career on the business side or on the development side, but within the industry of video game creation. And they're just such a great, great organization for people to help women get into their first entry-level job, but then also we have a full curriculum of how to move up within the organization and we have mentors and we have classes. We have events at every trade event and industry event that we have. You'll see there's a whole team of people that are there from WIGI, that's what we call it. And helping women not just enter the industry, but continue their career growth on in in all different types of positions within the industry. And I love this organization. Joni Kraut is the CEO and she's just doing a phenomenal job helping women both enter and continue their successful career path in video games.

Mary Killelea: And that's so important is progression and retention. I am excited. I will include that in the show notes to make sure everyone has access to that. Are there any other good resources that you can recommend around you know building community for women in yeah gaming?

Christina Seelye: Yeah, WIGI is really great on the business side if you want to work in the industry, but there's also an organization called the GameHers, g-a-m-e-h-e-r-s, GameHers, and they're really focused on um women gamers and creating community around women who are playing games. and being comfortable identifying as a gamer. And Rebecca Dixon is a woman who's running that organization and she's also great. That's really great, especially if you know have kids and you know daughters nieces that are playing games and you want them to have support and a and a safe space to talk about all of their gaming experiences and other people to game with the GameHers is a great community and organization to tap into.

Mary Killelea: Is there anything that you would do differently if you started off your career again?

Christina Seelye: Nobody's ever asked me that before. No I don't think so.

Mary Killelea: That's a good that's a good feeling, isn’t it?

Christina Seelye: There's a lot of things that I can look back on like business-wise that I would say oh that was too risky, or I should have taken that path or I should have turned here, but I don’t know. Like when you go back and look at it, there is a through line of smarter people would have stopped sooner than I did. There is a little bit of a through line of that, but I think that that all the things that you learn are good along the way. I think I’m really glad that I had parents and a family around me, and a husband and kids who were really flexible and supportive with my need to start and grow businesses. I think one of the things that I know a lot of other women who have run companies have reminded everyone is choose carefully your partner in crime for your life because I think it really makes a difference on how free you feel to take these risks of starting companies, or working hard, or being brave and doing hard things. I am very blessed that I am in a situation where I have a phenomenal husband and family who are very supportive of all of my crazy business ideas and goals for myself.

Mary Killelea: Does your brain ever shut off?

Christina Seelye: Yes. I really like TV, and so I love at the end of the day to just shut everything off and watch something. I love Grey’s Anatomy. So I do have to to turn it off a little bit, but I turn it off. Gaming does not let your brain turn off because it is still very active, it's very interactive. I call it passive entertainment which is you're just sitting there and having the tv entertain you

Mary Killelea: Right. I do that too. What does to be bolder mean to you?

Christina Seelye: You know, that’s a great question. When my comms team came and said the To Be Bolder podcast. I was like oh my gosh I love the encouragement to go be bolder. I say to my team all the time that we are brave and we do hard things, and think that if you're not out there being brave and being bold then what are you doing? So I would say it is really is inspiring to see and to encourage others and what I love about that is that you're saying… Like I took it as an encouragement to be bolder, go be bolder, go do hard things, go be brave. And it's not to be bold, it's to be bolder. It's to be a little bit more than what you're doing today which I also love because having that kind of growth mindset and learning and being an avid learner and doing more tomorrow, I love that way of living.

Mary Killelea: Thank you so much for being here. Before we sign off, is there anything that you want to tell the listeners that we didn't cover today?

Christina Seelye: No, you're so good. This was great. I really enjoyed it and if you want to know more about gaming, please check out what we're doing at Zordix and all of our different subsidiaries. And then if you want to get in the industry, women in games international is a really great way to start.

Mary Killelea: Thank you so much for being here.

Christina Seelye: Thanks.

Mary Killelea: Thanks for listening to the episode today. It was really fun chatting with my guest. If you liked our show, please like it and share it with your friends. If you want to learn what we're up to, please go check out our website at to be bolder.com, that's the number two little b bolder.com.