EQUAL ESPORTS COUNCIL

Vice President Brand Experience, Deutsche Telekom

Antje Hundhausen has more than 25 years’ experience in executive positions in the IT/telecommunications and tourism industries. The business administration graduate and music and art expert is in charge of 3D Brand Experience at Deutsche Telekom. In October of 2020, a year made unique by the coronavirus pandemic, she launched the Magenta Moon Campus – a long-term, wide-ranging initiative to encourage digital education and sustainability. She is also involved in the Equal eSports Initiative, which focuses on promoting women in gaming.

Streamer & Moderator

As a Twitch streamer and eSports moderator, Theres, better known as Sissor, made a name for herself in the scene early on. The gamer from Bavaria has been active in the online entertainment industry since 2013. One year later, she hosted her first eSports events. She is a permanent fixture in the German League of Legends community. Today, Sissor is still in full action and entertains her community with frequent gaming streams on Twitch.

Team Manager Astralis

Rebecca Cantarella has already gained a lot of experience in eSports. After working as an analyst in League of Legends for the eSports organisations PENTA and BIG, she now works as a team manager. She started with the LEC and Academy team of EXCEL. She is now responsible for the LEC team at Astralis.

Member of the executive board of Germany’s esports association (ESBD) with responsibility for diversity and equality

Kristin Banse has been working in various positions in the eSports industry since 2014. After a stint at Freaks4u Gaming, she worked as an eSports and marketing advisor at game, the German games industry association. In her position as a member of the ESBD's executive committee, she advocates for more equality and diversity in eSports. In her free time, she enthusiastically follows Formula 1 and learns about new languages and cultures.

Managing Director und General Counsel Rogue Sports & Executive Vice President Esports ReKTGlobal

While studying law, Anna Baumann fell in love with the game World of Warcraft in 2002, which is how her love of gaming began. Anna's eSports roots lie in the legal field, where she worked as a lawyer for many years. She pursued the goal of professionalising eSports and establishing best practices regarding player welfare and integrity issues. As Vice President Esports at ReKTGlobal, she is responsible for Rogue and the London Royal Ravens. She is also a member of the Disciplinary Committee of the Esports Integrity Commission (ESIC) and deals with integrity issues for the eSports Federation Germany (ESBD).

Sustainability consultant and lecturer

Julia Hiltscher made eSports history as the first professional player at the World Cyber Games. From 2004-2023, she worked for ESL FACEIT Group, where as Director of Corporate Responsibility she launched the #GGFORALL initiative, against discrimination, for environmental protection and for more diversity in the gaming community. Dr Hiltscher is the editor of the eSports Yearbook and a board member of the Esports Research Network. She also received her doctorate in 2021. Her dissertation dealt with the MOBA games DOTA 2 and League of Legends, the socio-cultural opportunities and dangers of eSports. She currently lectures on CSR & eSports at various universities in Europe and advises companies on CSR topics.

eSports Event Host

Melly can look back on a long career in eSports. She has been active in eSports for almost 20 years. Her career began with attending an ESL eSports competition in 2003. She always pursued the goal of being able to play eSports professionally. In 2007, she made it to the World Championship in Paris as a Counter-Strike 1.6 player. Since 2010, she has been working as a journalist and eSports event host. Among other things, she hosted the first edition of the Equal eSports Festival.

Team manager of KOI

Since 2020, Alexandra Hehn has been team manager of Rogue's LEC team, which was recently renamed KOI. There she established the topics of Mental Health and Performance, among others. Under her leadership, Rogue/KOI has been able to establish itself as a top team in the LEC in recent years, winning the 2022 Summer Split and qualifying for the League of Legends World Championships three times in a row.

Co-founder of the Siegen Bisons

As an enthusiastic gamer, she found her way to eSports through the Chair of Human Resource Management at the University of Siegen. Through her studies, she discovered "Human Resource Management with a focus on eSports" as a field of research and quickly developed a passion for eSports. In 2018, she founded the Siegen Bisons with fellow students. She is also a co-founder of the Esports Research Network. She currently works in employee branding.

Psychologist, former LoL player and analyst Austrian Force Esports

Marlies Brunnhofer is one of the most successful female eSport athletes in Austria. After several stints with women teams such as the Movistar Riders, the woman from Graz made her debut in 2020 as the first woman in the then First Division of the Prime League. In the meantime, the psychology graduate has ended her active career and is now working in a research group on the topic of eSports. She sees her future in psychology. She wants to continue to follow eSports as a hobby.

Assistant Coach Schalke 04 Esports & LoL Coach esports player foundation

Lea Fitzen is the first female professional League of Legends coach in Germany. After a stint as head coach at E Wie Einfach E-Sports, she now works as an assistant coach for Schalke 04 Esports in the Prime League. She is also part of the esports player foundation as a coach.

PhD student, Speaker & author on games, gaming, and eSports

Jana Möglich has been involved in eSports since around 2006. She started her career as a competitive player in Rainbow Six and Call of Duty. Later, she worked mainly in team, community and event management. In her Bachelor's and Master's thesis, she finally also dealt with eSports in a research capacity. In the meantime, her focus is fully on research as well as on regional eSports. She is currently writing her doctoral thesis in this area and has been a co-founder and board member of the Schleswig-Holstein e-sports association since 2021.

Performance coach for KOI & sports psychologist

The qualified sports psychologist has been active in competitive sports since 2016. She began her career as an independent psychologist. In this role, she worked with speed skaters and basketball players, among others. She is currently employed as a performance coach at KOI. There she looks after the League of Legends and Rainbow Six teams and dedicates her daily work primarily to the physical and mental well-being, as well as to improving the performance of the individual players and teams.

Vice President & Gender Officer of the E-Sport Verband Österreich (ESVÖ)

Yvonne has been involved in Austrian eSports for ten years - initially as a competitive player in Call of Duty, then as an eSports referee. Since 2018, she has been speaking about diversity in gaming and eSports as a gender representative.

Research Professor for Digital Media and Performance in Social Work at the FH Potsdam

Judith Ackermann wrote her doctoral thesis on communication at LAN parties, which earned her the title "Dr. Counter Strike" in the press. Since then, she has been regularly present in the media as an expert on digital games. Judith is a member of the Esports Research Network and is proportionally responsible for the research department at the North Rhine-Westphalia State Association for E-Sports. She is the initiator of the international urban games festival playin'siegen and heads the Digital Participation and Inclusion Lab at the FH Potsdam. With her current BMBF project "Women scientists in the media", she is committed to making expertise of women visible and recognised in various fields, which is also a major concern for her in the field of eSports.

Performance Coach mYinsanity & Adamas Esports

Nina Zweifel is a psychologist by training and has been working as a performance coach in esports for 6 years. At the Swiss team mYinsanity, she built up a multidisciplinary team of nutritional counselling, physiotherapy and mental coaching and looked after numerous amateur and semi-professional athletes. Since March 2021, she has been working as a performance coach at Adamas Esports Training + Performance and was also able to gain further experience at the highest level in an internship with Team Vitality in the LEC and LFL.

Caster, Analyst and eSports Host

Anika has been casting and analysing League of Legends full-time since 2019 and is an integral part of the DACH scene. She made her first experiences in 2018 at the "Summoner's Inn Junior Caster" programme. She has already been part of big events like The Main 2, the first PRM Offline Finals as well as 2022 as a caster at the Equal eSports Festival Vol 2.

Media scientist

Finja Walsdorff is a media scientist with a research focus on gender & gaming culture, content creation, eSports and games & mental health. She teaches and researches at the University of Siegen and the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. In her dissertation "Gender Participation, Streaming & E-Sports" she conducted a status-quo analysis of the German-speaking streaming and eSports culture with a focus on streamers & eSports players. She also regularly gives talks and organises workshops and symposia on her research topics. Finja is co-editor of the academic journal "Spiel|Formen" and since 2020 spokesperson of the AG Games, the Society for Media Studies. Here, she advocates for stronger academic engagement with topics such as equality in gaming culture and eSports.