Meet Our Team!
DANI MERRITHEW (THEY/TheM)
Dani Merrithew (They/Them) is a Lead Quest/Game Designer on World of Warcraft and a mentor to recent Game Design grads.
Dani leans heavily into their superpower of being an empath; they use this to lead and push for change with empathy, courage, and empowerment at the forefront. Their journey started initially as a QA tester and over 6 years worked their way up to becoming the Lead Game Designer at Epic Story Interactive who has supported pre-production to release, to live-ops of various projects, then over to Kabam for two years to lead Disney Mirrorverse through World Wide Launch and 12 live releases. Now they are living their dream and are at Blizzard working on World of Warcraft!
They Lead with compassion, understanding, and active listening. They strongly believe that uplifting co-workers and creating a supportive environment for them allows teams to thrive and put out successful games. Dani continues to challenge the industry status quo that a Lead does not need to be the loudest in the room, but they should strive to be the kindest!
anastasiia kovaleva (She/Her)
Anastasiia (She/Her) is a Video Game Producer and a self-taught hobbyist artist.
Anastasiia transitioned from Hospitality to Video Games UX/UI in 2019. She enjoyed her first experiences in this new environment so much that she decided to stick around, eventually moving into Production. A few years later, she took a leap of faith and switched from UX/UI to Game Development, which has been her passion ever since.
With all the joys that came into her life with a new career, Anastasiia also recognizes the struggles that many developers experience on their journeys, from poor hiring and crediting policies to lack of entry positions and lack of representation across the board. Now, she’s on the mission of improving the industry standards and educating the people on the importance of healthy workplace policies and processes.