Looking Forward

Chief Executive Officer
With over 20 years of leadership experience in the games industry, Steve has had the good fortune to help drive major technology shifts in gaming with industry defining partners. Prior to ForwardXP, Steve was the CEO of Ritual Entertainment, Director at id Software, GM of Digital at GameStop, and later co-founder and CEO of mobile gaming analytics and CRM pioneer Yvolver, before its acquisition by AdColony. Steve has led teams that shipped titles in some of the best selling video game franchises of all-time including Counter-Strike, DOOM, QUAKE, RAGE and Wolfenstein. Steve remains passionate about innovating around the combination of emerging new technologies. Steve is a co-founder/active advisor to the Guildhall at SMU and lives in Dallas with his wife and two daughters. He also enjoys home automation hacking, and driving endurance road races in a sketchy old race car.

Chief Technology Officer
As leader of the technology team, Jah brings over 20 years of industry experience including many years as a Lead Programmer at id Software where he shipped leading titles, including, DOOM RPG, QUAKE LIVE, and RAGE. After id Software, Jah co-founded Yvolver and led the development of the best-in-class mobile gaming CRM solution before the company was acquired by AdColony where he continued to serve as VP of Engineering. With an emphasis on always learning new and interesting things, Jah’s wide array of skills allow him to move between frontend, backend and client development with ease. Jah is a longtime World of Warcraft player and he created Raider.IO, the world’s leading ranking site for World of Warcraft players and guilds. He also enjoys audiobooks, tabletop games, D&D, and exploring new coffee shops.

Director, People and Culture
Lauren is an experienced people leader and human resource management professional creating a team-driven environment with exposure in project management, long range planning, team leadership, operations management, and organizational development. She has spent the last 8 years serving organizational leaders and people building culture and aligning behavior to produce results. Her ability to help people understand and execute simple skills with a growth mindset and results oriented approach, both personally and professionally, is what makes her message so practical and influential. Lauren simplifies the complex so you can focus on doing what works best for you.

Director, Production
A people-first production leader, Mike has over 16 years of industry experience, 11 in leadership roles building and supporting excellent game production and studio operations teams. He has contributed to over a dozen title launches across PC, mobile, web, console and VR platforms. Mike has experience working with development, publishing, and IP partners from around the globe, supporting game releases under brands such as Tetris, Pac-Man, Disney, and Dungeons & Dragons. For nearly 6 years he lived and worked overseas with diverse teams spread across Europe. Joining ForwardXP as Employee #10 in the company’s first full-time production role, Mike has supported both the growth of the company past 50 employees, as well as the establishment of the Production and QA Departments, allowing the company to scale to support increasingly ambitious projects and partnerships.

Director, Design
Ronn Harbin is a 25-year veteran of the games industry. His contributions include art, design, and scripting on titles from iconic franchises such as DOOM, QUAKE, and Call of Duty. Before joining ForwardXP in 2018, Ronn led a team of artists, designers, and engineers in creating award-winning, cutting-edge VR and mobile experiences for clients such as the U.S. Air Force, General Motors, Legendary Pictures, and Disney. As Design Director at ForwardXP, Ronn draws on his years of cross-discipline and leadership experience to drive passionate creative team members that deliver innovative and leading edge concepts.

Director, Art
As Studio Art Director, Justin Thomas has 25 years of experience working with various teams and sizes to accomplish visual goals and direction on a variety of projects. Through the years he has had the opportunity to learn from and work with the many of the industry’s top franchises and developers. His past work includes helping to establish AAA franchises like Medal of Honor and Call of Duty, to working with license properties with Transformers, to helping extend casual titles on the Sims 3, to exploring new IP possibilities. Justin brings a passion for telling visual stories in order to find the best execution within the constraints of budget, time, tools, technology and talent that speaks to a desired audience.

Director, Engineering
David is an award-winning game developer and mentor whose experience now spans multiple decades. He has made major engineering and leadership contributions to iconic games and franchises such as QUAKE, DOOM, and RAGE. In addition to his individual contributor work, David has put a focus on sharing his knowledge with others whenever possible, having taught multi-player game development at the University of Washington and authored several articles for the Game Programming Gems book series. As a leader he helped to forge the studio that developed the BAFTA-Award winning Never Alone (Kisima Ingitchuna). He strives to foster cohesive and creative technical teams that have a passion for attention to detail.