Fiona Cherbak

Fiona Cherbak is a senior games industry staffing and events professional, developing hiring strategies and diversity campaigns for a broad cross-section of global game companies and organizations. Fiona has provided HR and recruiting services for leading clients such as Take Two, Activision, Disney, Electronic Arts, NCsoft and Sony. Fiona is currently Lead Recruiter for Sony PlayStation, Worldwide Studios. Fiona was previously Senior Staffing Specialist for Gameloft and Irrational Games, and Senior Talent Acquisition Manager for Tencent Boston.

Fiona is former chairperson for IGDA Women in Games SIG, a founding member and producer of Women in Games International, co-creator of GameMentorOnline, and partnership advisor for the European Women in Games Conference and Women in Games Jobs in the U.K. She presented a “hiring women in games” panel at GDC 2015 in San Francisco, and reprised the same panel at GDC Europe in Cologne, Germany in August 2015.

Fiona speaks at college campuses across the U.S., including USC Game Design, MIT and Savannah School of Design. She has been a regular speaker at GDC, GDC Europe and GDC’s Game Career Seminar series, plus a 5-year advisory board member and speaker at SXSW Screenburn/SXSW Interactive. She wrote the oft-republished 2006 article, “The Game Industry’s 100 Most Influential Women," for Edge Magazine, and has been published in four game industry books, including 2012 and 2014 U.K. university textbooks.

As a member of the indie games community, Fiona is co-founder and co-producer of Boston Festival of Indie Games, and prior advisor to national indie game events IndieCade and Fantastic Arcade. In 2015, Fiona was part of ‘women in games” initiative developed under the auspices of former president Obama's U.S. White House.