ADVISORS & ASSOCIATES

BOB BELLANO | Senior Part­ner | Nosal Part­ners LLC.
With over 25 years of expe­ri­ence in exec­u­tive search, Bob has con­ducted numer­ous search assign­ments for chief exec­u­tive offi­cers, pres­i­dents, chief finan­cial offi­cers and senior lead­ers in oper­a­tions, engi­neer­ing, tech­nol­ogy, busi­ness devel­op­ment, mar­ket­ing and sales. He has placed exec­u­tives across mul­ti­ple indus­tries through­out North and South Amer­ica, Europe and Asia. Bob’s clien­tele includes For­tune 1000 com­pa­nies, as well as small– to mid-size orga­ni­za­tions, many of which are pri­vate equity– or venture-backed. He has deep exper­tise in indus­tries rang­ing from advanced tech­nol­ogy, busi­ness ser­vices, health­care, enter­tain­ment, inter­ac­tive media, indus­trial, defense, infrastructure/engineering ser­vices, and clean tech­nol­ogy. Prior to join­ing Nosal Part­ners, Bob served since 1994 as Man­ag­ing Direc­tor and Founder at cFour Part­ners Worldwide─a lead­ing retained exec­u­tive search firm serv­ing clients in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia and the West­ern United States. Bob serves as an advi­sor to sev­eral early-stage ven­ture funds serv­ing the inter­ac­tive media and clean tech­nol­ogy mar­ket, as well as to a highly-regarded orga­ni­za­tion that pro­vides pro­pri­etary deal flow to pri­vate equity firms. The Los Ange­les Busi­ness Jour­nal has con­sis­tently rec­og­nized Bob as a “Top 25 Tech­nol­ogy Fig­ure” in Los Ange­les. Bob holds a Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence in Eco­nom­ics from Lafayette Col­lege, and a Mas­ter of Sci­ence in Indus­trial Eco­nom­ics from the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics.
http://www.nosalpartners.com

JASON DELLA ROCCA | Founder & Senior Con­sul­tant | Perime­ter Part­ners
Jason, a 12 year vet­eran of the gam­ing indus­try, is the founder of Perime­ter Part­ners, a con­sul­tancy focused on devel­op­ing game indus­try clus­ters around the world in part­ner­ship with stake­hold­ers from gov­ern­ment, acad­e­mia and the game indus­try. For nearly nine years, he served as the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Inter­na­tional Game Devel­op­ers Asso­ci­a­tion (IGDA), a pro­fes­sional soci­ety com­mit­ted to advanc­ing the game indus­try and the careers of devel­op­ers. Jason has pre­vi­ously worked at IGDA, CMP, Quazal, Matrox Graph­ics, Sil­i­con Graph­ics and Price Water­house.
http://perimeterpartners.com

PETER DUKE | Inde­pen­dent Strate­gic Con­sul­tant | Duke Media
Peter Duke is an award-winning cre­ative direc­tor and tech­ni­cal inno­va­tor in all aspects of the devel­op­ment process, includ­ing con­cep­tu­al­iza­tion, com­pet­i­tive analy­sis, require­ments iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, team par­tic­i­pa­tion, brand posi­tion­ing, client inter­ac­tion and exec­u­tive pre­sen­ta­tions. He has high-caliber lead­er­ship expe­ri­ence in pitch­ing and win­ning new busi­ness cam­paigns, along with over­all busi­ness plan­ning and indus­try prod­uct knowl­edge, for For­tune 500 cus­tomers in consumer-focused prod­ucts and cre­ative indus­tries. He has also devel­oped and exe­cuted suc­cess­ful con­sumer prod­uct launches, high-impact mar­ket­ing ini­tia­tives and busi­ness plans with a cre­ative, vision­ary approach. Peter has cre­ated and pro­duced solu­tions for com­pa­nies such as 20th Cen­tury Fox (The X-Files), Fox Sports, Sega Game­Works, Microsoft, Sesame Street Work­shop, EMI Capi­tol Records, and Vir­gin Enter­tain­ment.
http://dukemedia.com

JOHN MELCHIOR | Exec­u­tive Pro­ducer & Cre­ative Direc­tor | El Guapo Pro­duc­tions
John has over 16 years of expe­ri­ence in the inter­ac­tive enter­tain­ment indus­try. He has suc­cess­fully man­aged and led 10 devel­op­ment teams. He has sold over 22 mil­lion copies of games. John recently founded EL Guapo Pro­duc­tions to help cre­ate, develop and man­age IP for com­pa­nies. John has worked on designs for most of his clients in the casual and social space, cre­at­ing and evolv­ing their IP into social appli­ca­tions and casual MMO’s. His clients include Atari, Ter­mi­nal Real­ity, Red Fly, a film direc­tor and Tril­ogy stu­dios. Prior to El Guapo, John was the Cre­ative lead and Exec­u­tive Pro­ducer at Sierra Games (for­mally Vivendi Games) where he was instru­men­tal in the suc­cess of Ghost­busters: The Video Game. Dur­ing his time at Vivendi John also worked as the Exec­u­tive Pro­ducer for such titles as Simp­sons Hit & Run (6.8 mil­lion units sold), Scar­face: The Video Game (2.4 Mil­lion units sold), Eragon (1.4 Mil­lion Units Sold), Spi­der­wick Chron­i­cles, Rid­dick PC (90% meta­critic) and Ground Con­trol 2 (90% meta­critic). John was also a part of Vivendi’s social game ini­tia­tive work­ing in part­ner with France to cre­ate social and mobile games. Prior to Sierra John was a cre­ative lead at 20th Cen­tury Fox where he cre­ated Simp­sons Road Rage (over 5 mil­lion units sold) as well as other titles. John has worked and deliv­ered mil­lion unit sell­ers at SEGA of Amer­ica, Elec­tronic Arts, Inter­play, Fox and Vivendi. He has shipped games on the Sega Gen­e­sis, Sat­urn, PC, Playsta­tion, Playstation2,Playstation3, Game­Cube, Nin­tendo Wii, Game­boy, Game­boy color,  Nin­tendo DS, Nin­tendo DSi, Microsoft Xbox, PSP and Xbox 360. He also has shipped games for every major stu­dio — Fox, Para­mount, Uni­ver­sal and Sony.

SEAN KAUPPINEN | Founder & CEO | Inter­na­tional Dig­i­tal Enter­tain­ment Agency
Sean Kaup­pinen is the founder and CEO of the Inter­na­tional Dig­i­tal Enter­tain­ment Agency. He has more than 15 years of man­age­ment, strate­gic com­mu­ni­ca­tions and busi­ness devel­op­ment exper­tise in the dig­i­tal enter­tain­ment indus­try and his the abil­ity to bring com­pa­nies together and pro­vide strate­gic guid­ance that has led to busi­ness growth for indus­try giants as well as start-ups. Dur­ing this time, Kaup­pinen has launched more than 450 titles on all major gam­ing plat­forms, rang­ing from big bud­get block­busters to value games. Kaup­pinen cur­rently holds advi­sory board posi­tions with GDC Europe, SXSW, NLGD, and mul­ti­ple early stage social media and game tech­nol­ogy com­pa­nies. He is a for­mer board mem­ber of GCDC and the GC Asia Con­fer­ence. Kaup­pinen is also an advi­sor to the Acad­emy of Inter­ac­tive Arts & Sci­ences.
http://ide-agency.com

GIANCARLO MORI | Senior Vice Pres­i­dent | Ani­mal Logic
Gian­carlo has more than 20 years expe­ri­ence in soft­ware devel­op­ment, 12 of which have been spent at a senior/executive level in the video game indus­try. Gian­carlo recently held the posi­tion as Senior VP of Inter­ac­tive at Ani­mal Logic (award win­ning spe­cial FX and ani­ma­tion stu­dio), head­ing the company’s entry in the video games space. Prior to Ani­mal Logic, Gian­carlo spent more than three years with Activi­sion as the Vice Pres­i­dent of Pro­duc­tion, North Amer­i­can Stu­dios, where he led the devel­op­ment of numer­ous titles based on orig­i­nal IP as well as sequel titles, includ­ing the Tony Hawk series, Gun (best sell­ing new IP of 2005), and sev­eral Dream­works Ani­ma­tion titles includ­ing Shrek and Over the Hedge.

BOB RAFEI | Co-Founder & Chief Visual Offi­cer | Big Red But­ton Enter­tain­ment
Bob Rafei is the Co-Founder and Chief Visual Offi­cer of Big Red But­ton Enter­tain­ment, Inc. and a 15 year vet­eran of the gam­ing indus­try. He was for­merly the 13 year art direc­tor, char­ac­ter ani­ma­tor and con­cept artist of Naughty Dog, Inc. (sub­sidiary of SCEA).  He joined NDI in early ’95 as its first employee while in the visual devel­op­ment stage of Crash Bandi­coot. He played a key role in estab­lish­ing the look of this series; touch­ing on all aspects of pro­duc­tion, from back ground mod­el­ing, light­ing, tex­tur­ing, to char­ac­ter rig­ging and ani­ma­tion. He con­tributed to led visual devel­op­ment and con­tributed to char­ac­ter ani­ma­tions and for the award win­ning Jak & Dax­ter series for the PS2. Most recently, Bob co-art directed the award win­ning Uncharted: Drake’s For­tune for PS3, focusing on visual devel­op­ment, cin­e­matic mo-cap, ani­ma­tion and light­ing.  These titles have gen­er­ated 35 Mil­lion unit sold to date. Bob serves as an advi­sory board mem­ber for Game Developer’s Con­fer­ence, The Game Devel­oper Choice Awards, and One Big Game. He has lec­tured at GDC, USC School of Cin­ema, Visual Effects Soci­ety, Gno­mon School and SIGGRAPH on var­i­ous VA & Pro­duc­tion sub­jects. He also serves as panel leader on Ani­ma­tion and Art Direc­tion craft cat­e­gories for the Acad­emy of Inter­ac­tive Arts and Sci­ences’ (AIAS) achieve­ment awards. He has con­tributed writ­ings to Ani­ma­tion Mag­a­zine and Ani­ma­tion World Net­work. Some of his non-gaming cred­its include album cover art for A&M Records, notably Blues Traveler’s: Trav­el­ers & Thieves, and inclu­sion in Soci­ety of Illus­tra­tors annual #35. He is a ’91 BFA grad­u­ate in Illus­tra­tion from Parson’s School of Design, NYC.
http://brbent.com

RICCI RUKAVINA | Co-Founder & Pres­i­dent | Loose Can­non Stu­dios
Ricci is Pres­i­dent and Co-Founder of Loose Can­non Stu­dios (LCS) in Kirk­land, WA. Ricci has more than 15 years expe­ri­ence in the film, tele­vi­sion and inter­ac­tive enter­tain­ment indus­tries work­ing on some of the high­est gross­ing film and game prop­er­ties of all time. Prior to LCS, Ricci was the Vice Pres­i­dent of Cre­ative /Product Devel­op­ment for the Walt Dis­ney Com­pany and the Cre­ative Direc­tor for Uni­ver­sal Inter­ac­tive Stu­dios and Vivendi Games, where he worked on the Spyro the Dragon series, The Thing and Scar­face. Ricci launched his enter­tain­ment career at Amblin Enter­tain­ment where he worked on Juras­sic Park, Alive and Twister.
http://www.loosecannonstudios.com