Speaker Series

In collaboration with New Voices In Gaming, we are proud to present the 2022 Tabletop Mentorship Speaker Series.

2022 Speaker Series

Cultural consultation, also known as sensitivity reading, isn’t just people hiring you to tell them they’re racist. Don’t get me wrong, it’s partly that—but cultural consulting is an active, additive, and even joyful process, one in which a consultant works with a client to create something better and cooler than either had imagined on their own. In this talk, Mendez will share his own path into cultural consulting, his process, and some of the ways you might know whether this career might be right or wrong for you.

James Mendez Hodes (he/him) is an ENnie Award-winning writer, game designer, and cultural consultant. You might know his design work from Avatar Legends, Thousand Arrows, or Scion; his cultural consulting work from Frosthaven, Magic: the Gathering, or the Jackbox Party Packs; or his writing from some articles complaining about orcs and racism. He graduated Swarthmore College with a major in Religion, and minors in Dance and English Literature. He also received a master’s degree in Eastern classics from St John’s College. His interests include martial arts, hip hop, poetry, and sumō wrestling. His primary party role is tank, secondary support.

Zooming Out: The Business of Art for Board Games with Tatiana Quigley

Tatiana Quigley talks about breaking into the tabletop industry, finding artists to work with, getting your art print-ready, and getting your game onto store shelves as close to your vision as possible.

Tatiana (she/her) is a sculptor, illustrator and renaissance woman who has worked on small parts of many board games. She got her start at Goliath Games sketching logo concepts and building prototype boxes before moving into sculpting, and product design. You can see much of her work in the skill and action game section in Target and Walmart. During her time at Goliath she also dabbled in freelance, working for publishers like Letiman games, XYZ game labs, and Asmodee. She currently works at MGA entertainment working on top secret toy projects. When not working on games, she is usually playing them, either digital or on the table. Or drawing elves. Find her @tatianaquigley on twitter and instagram.

An A-Z Guide on Getting Your RPG to Market with Heather O'Neill

This will focus more on the business and production side of what it takes to bring your RPG to market. I'll talk about the options you have, what you'll have to do to be successful, and what to do once your RPG is out in the world.

Heather O'Neill (she/her) is the CEO of 9th Level Games, an indie TTRPG publisher. She has been in the gaming industry for approximately 10 years and has designed games, developed games, and done all the business stuff to get games out into the world. Heather is also the Managing Director of UNPUB, the Unpublished Game Network and a member of the Game Maker's Guild Philadelphia chapter. In her free time, of which is very little, Heather likes to play tennis, watch comedies, hang with friends, and travel.

Pitching Your Services as a Content Creator with Raina Medina

Raina is best known as 1 Minute Board Games, a TikTok channel dedicated to concise tabletop content. She created the channel in July 2020 and 2 years later is so lucky to have built a community of over 340,000 board gamers. Through working in board game media she became fascinated with the business side of the industry. This prompted her to seek learning opportunities and led to her becoming the new Marketing Manager of Pandasaurus Games. Whether she is creating content or working on marketing strategies, she is passionate about diversifying the tabletop space and opening the line of communication amongst content creators.