Cynthia Williams – President, Wizards of the Coast and Digital Gaming

Fearless Women Podcast By Janice McDonald

Cynthia Williams is President of Wizards of the Coast and Digital Gaming at Hasbro. In this role, Cynthia leads the strategy for two of the biggest names in gaming, MAGIC: THE GATHERING and DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, while driving continued global growth for the division and leading new fan and story-led tabletop and digital experiences. She is focused on building and expanding on the outstanding foundation laid by Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks, under whose leadership Wizards of the Coast doubled its revenue from 2018 to 2021.

Cynthia has a deep understanding of technology and e-commerce, along with cloud and console-based gaming, with expertise in scaling businesses to drive profitable growth. She previously served as General Manager and Vice President, Gaming Ecosystem Commercial Team at Microsoft, notably driving the expansion of Xbox Gaming and the acceleration of game-creator growth. Prior to joining Microsoft, Cynthia spent more than a decade at Amazon, where she led the global growth of their e-commerce direct-to-consumer business, Fulfillment by Amazon.

She serves as an advisor to Mana Up Hawaii, a product incubator focused on empowering Hawaiian entrepreneurs to scale globally. Cynthia graduated from Western Carolina University with a B.S. in Business Administration, Summa Cum Laude and received her MBA with Distinction from Wake Forest University.

Listen till 14:39 to hear Cynthia talk about the importance of play and why women should give gaming a try!

“I would encourage women to give gaming a try if they haven’t in the past. Perhaps you thought, when I was growing up my first experience with DUNGEONS & DRAGONS was with a group of guys I knew and they were playing and I asked if I could play and they were like no this isn’t for girls. Well now more than fifty percent of the people who play DUNGEONS & DRAGONS are women and so I would encourage women who maybe thought they weren’t invited to the party to give it a try because it is a terrific way to connect with people, to relieve some stress and to have fun. Play is a human need, it’s not just for children and so I would encourage the women listening to your podcast to spend more time in their life playing.”

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