Game Executive
Where game makers become game changers.
Leadership in the games industry is about managing uncertainty, creativity, and pressure simultaneously, while building sustainable teams in a success-dependent, rapidly evolving environment. Most leaders in this fast-paced world started as designers, programmers, or artists, yet few have been prepared for the unique leadership challenges ahead.
The Game Executive program is designed to close that gap. This leadership development program is built specifically for the games industry - not adapted from a generic management curriculum, but grounded in how games are actually made and led. It equips emerging and current leaders with the strategic, creative, and human capabilities required to lead in one of the world's most dynamic industries.
What makes this different? The Game Executive program is built for the games industry, together with people who deeply understand the game business. Cross-company cohorts, industry case clinics, and the network architecture of the program strengthen collective leadership capacity across the ecosystem in ways no single company could replicate on its own. The program maintains a close connection to the games industry from design through execution, with active involvement from industry partners, including Cambridge Academy of Digital Games and Innovation (CADGI). The program is also built to last. Alumni architecture and cohort-over-cohort accumulation mean the program's value grows with each iteration - participants join a community that compounds over time.
In cooperation with
Benefits
Participating in this program builds essential leadership capabilities that directly strengthen creative efficiency, resilience, and ability to thrive in a rapidly changing game industry.
For
Game Executive is designed for individuals who have moved, or are moving, from specialist or creative roles into leadership positions in the game industry, often without formal development support.
Typical participants include producers and team leads, senior designers and technical directors, business development leads, and studio founders in their early years. This is an international program delivered in English via live online sessions.
Content and Schedule
Game Executive runs from January to May 2027 in a live online format. Live online sessions combine expert faculty, industry guest speakers, and hands-on methods including live simulations, peer coaching, and AI-assisted workflows.
Between sessions, participants engage through the Aalto EE Learning Platform (Alex), which provides pre-readings, podcasts, and supplementary online courses. Peer groups meet bi-weekly throughout the program, and each participant develops an Individual Development Plan from kick-off to closing.
The program is structured around three interconnected themes, progressing from leading yourself to leading others to leading the business.
Theme I — Leading Self
The first theme introduces the identity shift from maker to manager: understanding what changes when you stop being the person who does the work and become responsible for the conditions under which others do it. You will explore managerial identity, leadership self-awareness, and build a personal leadership development plan.
Theme II — Leading Teams
The second theme focuses on the realities of creative team leadership: psychological safety in interdisciplinary teams, navigating tension between production and marketing, managing cross-functional collaboration, and leading people whose expertise you do not share.
Theme III — Leading Business
The third theme develops the strategic and commercial capabilities that game leaders need: reading market signals, understanding game business models and monetization logic, making decisions under uncertainty, and understanding how AI is transforming production pipelines.
Modules
Instructors
Aimee Freeding
Aimee Freeding is the Founder and Executive Director of First Sentinel Corporate Finance, a London-based corporate finance firm she established in 2015.
She brings more than 20 years of experience leading product and platform experiences for major technology companies, with research and design roles at Microsoft (including Xbox), Oracle, and Expedia, where she served as EU Head of User Experience. She also has experience as an investor in the resources and technology sectors.
Freeding holds an MSc in Human-Computer Interaction from DePaul University.
Ville Eloranta
Dr. Ville Eloranta is currently working as a Senior University Lecturer at Aalto University School of Business.
He is also Director of the IDBM Master's Program (the Aalto International Design Business Management program for future transdisciplinary professionals) and involved in developing Network University Fitech (a transformative education endeavor of the seven biggest Finnish universities, Technology Industries of Finland, and TEK, the trade union for academic engineers and architects in Finland).
Dr. Ville Eloranta is an expert in design management (connecting design paradigms to management practice), business model innovation (especially platform business models), and distributed ledger technologies (especially open blockchain implementations). He has a solid track record of publications in top-level management journals.
Besides a strong academic track record, Dr. Ville Eloranta has 20 years of experience in design and entrepreneurship solving digitalization challenges, especially for big B2B customers.
Ville Eloranta holds a PhD in Industrial Engineering and Management from Aalto University School of Science and Technology.
Niina Nurmi
Niina Nurmi is an Associate Professor at Aalto University School of Business.
Her research in the fields of organizational psychology and organizational behavior focuses on leadership, work design, and self-organizing in contemporary knowledge-intensive organizations. Nurmi studies the digital transformation of knowledge work and how information technology affects virtual work, leadership, work design, work processes, team dynamics, employee well-being, and innovative performance.
Nurmi's academic background is in Adult Education and Organizational Psychology. She is trained as an ethnographer at Stanford University, Center for Work, Technology, and Organization at the Department of Management Science and Engineering, where she worked for four years as a visiting scholar and postdoctoral researcher. She has also studied statistics at the University of Helsinki, Department of Mathematics and Statistics. Before entering academia, Niina worked as an HR Manager.
James Shepherd
James Shepherd is CEO of Cypherdelic and an award-winning creative executive.
Shepherd has received Baftas and a Develop award for his outstanding executive work and has delivered multi-million selling products. As Head of the nDreams Studio, James was responsible for delivering cutting edge VR products, Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord (PSVR2/ Quest 2-3), Synapse (PSVR2, 77% Metacritic), Fracked (PSVR and Meta Quest 2-3, 71% Metacritic, 88% Quest Score) and Far Cry: Dive into Insanity (Location-based shooter).
Previously at Microsoft, he ran the key Xbox One and Xbox Live games community Upload, generating a 6.5 million user base, and over 10+ million views in the 12-month launch window.
At Sony, he had over 5 years’ experience as director of a multi-project development studio, releasing AAA products on all PlayStation platforms. He was equally adept with production and creative issues, directing the vision and strategic planning on a diverse range of game and non-game projects such as Upload, Heavenly Sword (PS3, 1.6m units, 79% Metacritic), Play-TV, Killzone Mercenary (PS Vita, 78% Metacritic), and LittleBigPlanet (PSP, 2.5m units, 87% Metacritic).
Jan Storgårds
Dr. Jan Storgårds is the program leader, an entrepreneur, and Director of CADGI ltd. (Cambridge Academy of Digital Games and Innovation) and CEO of Cambridge Gamechanger Ltd.
He has over 25 years of experience working in the industry and academia with high technology companies and technology cluster development, including video games and gamification.
He holds Dr.Sc. in information systems science in computer games development from Aalto University, Finland. Jan is also a Mentor at Cambridge Judge Business School (University of Cambridge), Accelerate Cambridge startup venture creation program, working with start-ups and early-stage technology companies, including video games studios.
Prior to his current roles, he was Sector Lead for Digital and Creative Industries at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, and a visiting research fellow at Cambridge Judge Business School.
Shailendra Vyakarnam
Dr. Shailendra Vyakarnam (Shai) is an entrepreneur, educator, investor, and institution builder with more than three decades of experience helping people make the transition from expertise and ideas to leadership, enterprise, and organizational growth.
His career has spanned entrepreneurship, science, technology, and executive education, with a particular interest in how individuals learn to lead through uncertainty and turn creative and technical capability into sustainable organizations.
At the University of Cambridge, he lead the development of the Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning and pioneered highly experiential programs including Enterprise Tuesday, Enterprisers, Ignite, and Emerging Technologies Entrepreneurship. Programs he has designed or helped develop have reached more than 30,000 participants.
His subsequent work has included mentoring entrepreneurs, advising leadership teams, investing, writing, and working with institutions and policymakers. More recently, he has returned to entrepreneurship himself, founding a deep-technology venture and confronting first-hand the challenges of building teams, securing customers and investment, forming partnerships, and scaling under uncertainty.
He describes himself as a “pracademic” – combining ideas and research with the practical experience of making things happen.