Evaluation Juries

Jen Goertzen is VP UX at BRYTER and currently based in Berlin, Germany. She co-founded Caribou, a Canadian UX consultancy, in 2011. Over the course of her career, she has led and consulted with design and product teams across a wide range of industries including interactive retail experiences, secure messaging, classical music streaming, and no-code automation.

Marie Mejerwall is a long-time game design and esports veteran. She has led creative teams at more than six game studios around the world, including studios in both Montréal and Vancouver, eventually earning her the role Game Director. She has worked on several famous award-winning franchises, such as Dead Rising, Deus Ex, RollerCoaster Tycoon and the Batman Arkham series.

Nowadays, she is a well-known speaker and consultant and shares her expertise with game studios, publishers, investors and schools. She is also actively coaching game teams in several incubator programs and part of several funding- and awards juries across the industry.

As an award-winning creative with over twenty years of combined experience across film & television entertainment, games, and digital media, Stefan has worked on a wide range of interactive projects focusing on art, narrative, and game design. He is passionate about developing story-based intellectual properties, art directing beautiful projects, and building out immersive and engaging story-worlds.

As creative lead on FOX’s Sleepy Hollow VR experience, Stefan’s pioneering work contributed to the first-ever Emmy® award for a virtual reality project (Outstanding Creative Achievement in Interactive Media - User Experience and Visual Design). Sleepy was an early leap forward for VR storytelling which was the first to combine live-action footage within CG environments. Many of the storytelling techniques that were developed during that project (such as 360º storyboards) have become standards for VR filmmakers.

He created and was the conceptual/creative lead on Halcyon, a groundbreaking hybrid broadcast/VR series launched in 80 territories and multiple languages through a partnership with Syfy International. Halcyon challenges the digital extension format through deeper integration of interactive episodes. The immersive gameplay gives audiences context for the events seen on broadcast, altering their perception of the overall story. Halcyon was nominated for a 2017 Rose d’Or in the inaugural VR category.

Stefan has also led projects for clients such as NBCUniversal, FOX, Fisher-Price, Hasbro, Warner Brothers, Syfy, Teletoon, YTV, and the National Film Board of Canada. He’s been honoured with a Peabody-Facebook award and multiple Canadian Screen awards.

As an acclaimed lecturer and panelist, Stefan has taught at Toronto Metropolitan University, and presented at media conferences across the globe.

Yat-Chi Lau is a Canadian video game producer, designer and artist. From 2007 to 2019, Lau worked at Ubisoft Montreal and Ubisoft Shanghai – on brands such as Prince of Persia, Rainbow 6 and Far Cry – where he acquired and developed the aptitudes for running large scale, multi-studio productions. In 2019 at Unity Technologies, Lau created and headed the Microgames product line – “ready to modify” game projects that introduced new users to core functionalities of the Unity game editor. In 2022, Lau became an independent games consultant, and his present focus is on Blockchain gaming and digital art.