Tanya Watson CELL (919) 436-9255• E-MAIL [email protected] • LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/tanyaj

PROFILE Building great products and teams is what makes my heart sing. Whether the goal is to change the world or to be more efficient and effective, let’s construct great teams and collaborate to develop strategies and techniques to get us there.

Customer & community focus. Internal or external, my goal is to be an arbiter of success by doing whatever it takes to help the team achieve their greatest potential and be transparent and honest along the way.

“Fail” fast and iterate. The path to success is not usually a straight line. My methodologies include scrum/agile as well as traditional waterfall and organic development. Always data- driven and with iteration in mind. Never be happy with less than greatness, but be sure to define it along the way.

EXPERIENCE ThotWave Technologies November 2015 – April 2016 Director of Marketing and Product Development

Brand and Product Owner for ThotWave. In the short time that I was at ThotWave, I worked to develop a new business strategy, brand look and feel, key messaging, brand voice, and content strategy for the online and social media presence. I managed the team that developed and re-launched www.thotwave.com and worked with the executive team to develop and pitch our services and offerings.

Epic Games Inc. May 2006 – November 2015 Executive Producer

Publishing: Built the publishing organization and processes from the ground-up. Key skills: Publishing strategy drove alignment of requirements out of ambiguity. Developed publishing schedule and timelines. Built web production and localization production teams. The bridge over the gaps of development, business intelligence, analytics, operations, player and online services, creative services, marketing, PR, and community.

Fortnite: Developed www.fortnite.com from inception with core leads team. Grew team from 10 to 110, directly managed 12. Key skills: Brand identity and pillars creation, owner of go to market strategy and strategic and development roadmap and priorities. Developed publishing milestones, contributed to marketing, web, and community plans in the ‘new world order.’ Drove all production processes and methodology for building the schedule and timelines.

Lead Producer

Bulletstorm: Developed www.bulletstorm.com from inception alongside team in Poland (People Can Fly) to deliver on three platforms and 13 languages on-budget and on-time.

Key skills: Brought clarity to the pre-production phase and experience and Epic knowledge to an inexperienced team. Used MS Project to develop and execute the entire schedule waterfall. Worked with owners across eight studios to keep communication flowing. Flew Tanya Watson CELL (919) 436-9255• E-MAIL [email protected] • LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/tanyaj

back and forth to Poland. A lot. Managed a team of four producers. Was the primary point of contact for communication with our publisher, worked directly with marketing and community to develop the brand.

Producer

Gears of War 3 & 2: Key Skills: Owner of production for these departments: Cinematics, level design, code, animation, audio, and localization. Ran full waterfall schedules. Some in MS Project, some in excel. Developed a home-brew project management solution.

Associate Producer

Gears of War PC, Unreal Tournament 3: Key Skills: Effective producer for Gears of War PC. Owned localization, bug glide slope to ship, triage.

Test Lead

Gears of War 1: Key skills: Got a lot of stuff done on an impossible project. Built a QA staff at Epic where none existed. Developed a build process where none existed.

Microsoft. 2003 - 2006 Software Development Engineer in Test; various roles

Vanguard: Saga of Heroes: Automation engineer and billing lead. Used C# to write scripts for testing and bug-logging. Owned all itemization and billing process.

Dungeon Siege 2 and Jade Empire: UX Test lead. Worked with User Experience team to develop surveys, in-game implementation of hooks, and data/analytics to support evidence of how we needed to better build our games and respond to feedback.

EDUCATION Bachelor of Arts: Political Science, minor in Communications University of Washington, Seattle, WA Graduated 2002

NOTABLE Achieved AAS while still attending high school. Completed BA in two years. Top ’30 under 30’ Develop Magazine http://www.develop-online.net/analysis/30-under-30/0116654 Spokesperson Credits: Fortnite, Bulletstorm, Gears of War, Unreal Tournament, and Red Octane. Google search “Tanya Jessen” to see those appearances. Television appearances: MTV, QVC, The Today Show, SpikeTV, Gametrailers, G4TV Keynote presentations: GDC 2010, GDC Europe 2011, Gamescom2010, ComicCon 2013, countless press events

PASSIONS Life as recess: Snowboarding, softball, beach volleyball, crossfit, rowing, gymnastics Human Behavior: Human interaction Design, UX, PENS/Needs satisfaction theory Arts: Music (Previously a French horn performance major), illustration, and video games.