Geek Girl Con Panelists

How to be a Nerd for a Living panel from GeekGirlCon 2014

In Animation, Best of Panels, Business & Marketing, Gaming, Live Panels, Misc, Podcast, TV & Film by Nerd For A Living

GeekGirlCon panelists Jaimie Cordero, Susan Eisenberg, Wendy Buske, Jina Heverley, Heidi Gaertner, and Rebecca Hicks

Nerd For A Living presented two panels at GeekGirlCon 2014 in Seattle, Washington. This episode was recorded live at our How to be a Nerd for a Living panel, moderated by N4AL marketing director Wendy Buske. (You can listen to the other panel on the Business of Self Promotion here.)

Our stellar line-up of speakers featured voice actress Susan Eisenburg, the voice of Wonder Woman from Justice League Unlimited; Jaimie Cordero, the CEO and Glitter Jedi of Espionage Cosmetics; Heidi Gaertner, technology director at Big Fish Games; Jina Heverley, vice president and general manager of PC, Mac & Cloud at Big Fish Games; and writer/artist Rebecca Hicks, creator of Little Vampires.

These talented ladies shared their professional experience in a number of nerdy industries, including advice and insights on how to create your own career path to a packed, enthusiastic crowd at GeekGirlCon.

Big thanks to our fabulous panelists and Geek Girl Con!

Click here to download the podcast.

Guest Bios

Jaimie Cordero of Espionage CosmeticsJaimie Cordero is the CEO / Artistic Director of Espionage Cosmetics, an all nerd, woman-owned business based in Tacoma, Washington, creating make-up for nerds, by nerds. Founded in 2011, the company has seen enormous growth in the niche nerd market. In the last year alone, Espionage Cosmetics has expanded from a living-room operation to a Tacoma-based studio space with 8 full-time employees, several part-timers and an army of interns. Bi-monthly product launches and fully produced ad campaigns pour out of the studio manned by a full-time wardrobe master/cosplay expert, an interns and conventions coordinator, and Jaimie. Her business card says Glitter Jedi.

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Susan EisenbergSusan Eisenberg is a professional voice-over artist known for her animation and commercial work. Her breakout role was that of Wonder Woman, aka Princess Diana, in the acclaimed Justice League and Justice League Unlimited television series. Eisenberg continued her animation work in cartoons such as Jackie Chan Adventures (Viper) and The Super Hero Squad (Power Princess), as well as in the video games Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (Shaak-Ti), Jak II (Ashelin), Daxter (Taryn), Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Mass Effect 3, and Destiny (Human, Female Player).

She reprised her role as Wonder Woman in 2010 in the Warner Bros. DVD Superman/Batman: Apocalypse. Since then she has voiced the Amazon Princess in video games (DCUO & Injustice: Gods Among Us), features (Justice League: Doom) and television (Wonder Woman short).

Susan has been featured in national television campaigns for Fancy Feast, Kenmore, Gatorade, Moet & Chandon, Pioneer Electronics, and Microsoft. She has recorded promos for CNN, and voices all of the television and radio commercials for The Salvation Army.

She studied acting and voice at American University in Washington, DC, The American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City, and the University of California, Los Angeles.

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Heidi GaertnerHeidi Gaertner is Technology Director at Big Fish Games, where she oversees all programming functions for the games being developed by Big Fish’s in-house studios.

Prior to Big Fish, Heidi spent almost a decade working for start-up game developers, such as 5th Cell Media and Flying Lab Software. At 5th Cell, Heidi led the programming team responsible for graphis on Hybrid. At Flying Lab Software, she was responsible for the client side of a MMORPG called Pirates of the Burning Sea. Heidi started her career at FASA in Chicago, which was sold to Microsoft in 1999, where Heidi worked for 4 years as a software development lead on the original Xbox.

Heidi graduated from Princeton University with a Bachelor of Science and Engineering degree.

 

Jina HeverleyJina Heverley is the Vice President and General Manager of PC, Mac, and Cloud for Big Fish Games. Jina oversees the operation of Big Fish’s PC and Mac downloadable games business, the world’s largest PC and Mac game app marketplace. She is also charged with expanding the company’s universal cloud gaming service, Big Fish Unlimited, into Europe and other international territories.

Jina joined Big Fish the year it was founded in 2002 and has been instrumental in the growth of the company. She was intrinsically involved in evolving Big Fish into a customer centric destination, and spearheaded the creation of Big Fish’s membership program, which resulted in reinvigorated growth for the company. Jina started as the Director of Finance for Big Fish.

Jina holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Finance from Seattle Pacific University.

 

Rebecca HicksRebecca Hicks is the writer/artist/creator of The Little Vampires, a long-running webcomic. She is a freelance artist and writer and founder of Lunasea Studios.

She specialized in Art at San Diego State University. Her work has been shown at the ArtLab Studios gallery in San Diego, and has been featured on the cover of San Diego CityBeat.

Rebecca also majored in English at the University of Kentucky, and had articles published for The Clay City Times and Kentucky Kernel newspapers.

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