10 Women Rising in Gaming
September 2026
Dearbhla Purcell
Company: Games Global, Director of Marketing & Events
Years of experience in the gaming industry: 8
Hometown: A hybrid of Dublin, Ireland and Douglas, Isle of Man
What was your first job in the gaming industry? Did you have previous experience in other industries? What drew you to gaming?
My first role in gaming was as an assistant brand manager, and I came to it from a fairly unlikely direction.
Before gaming, I was a quantity surveyor in construction. It taught me commercial acumen the hard way – budgets, forecasting, measurement, risk, contracts. A world of hard numbers and hard hats. I loved the discipline of it. I didn’t love how little room there was for the creative half of my brain.
Gaming had everything construction didn’t – pace, color, storytelling, and an industry that reinvents itself week in, week out.
What actually pulled me across was the people. I met a handful of them early on and thought, right, these are my kind of people and this is my kind of pace. Articulate, commercially sharp, and genuinely obsessed with what they build and the brands they create.
I have never looked back, although I’ll admit the surveying brain still shows up every time someone hands me a budget.
What do you like about working in gaming? What is it about the industry that keeps you engaged? What is unique about it?
The breadth of it, honestly. No two days look the same and I’ve stopped expecting them to.
What keeps me engaged is how many disciplines sit in one room. Gaming is creative and commercial and technical and heavily regulated, all at once. To do it well, you have to stay curious about all of it, and that suits me.
What’s unique is the scale versus the intimacy. It’s a genuinely global industry – and yet it still feels small. You keep meeting the same faces, in the best way. Relationships compound here in a way I don’t think they do everywhere.
And then there are the products and the brands themselves. We make things whose entire purpose is to entertain people. On a difficult Tuesday, that’s a cool thing to remember – and a lovely thing to pour creative energy into.
Looking ahead, what impact do you hope to make in the industry, and what would you like your leadership legacy to be?
I’d like to be remembered for the people, and for the brands we built together over time. Not for the one-hit campaigns.
Campaigns have a shelf life. People, and what they can create together, don’t. The work I’m proudest of is the people I’ve hired, backed, promoted and occasionally pushed a little harder than they wanted to be pushed – who are now doing things they didn’t believe, or didn’t know, they could do. And of course, the brands we’ve built together and cemented on the global map.
That’s the legacy I’d want. Teams where people outgrow the role you gave them and leave better than they arrived. And in turn, the best brand work – the kind that actually lands with players.
More specifically, I want to see more women in senior commercial roles in this industry. Not only on panels discussing representation, but in the rooms where commercial strategy gets decided. I’m a firm believer in #GiveToGain, and mentorship is where that starts. Lift as you grow – it isn’t complicated, it just has to be deliberate.
Ask me in 10 years, and I hope the answer comes from someone else – she opened doors, and I’m here because of it.
What personal and professional qualities or traits do you believe are essential for success in the gaming industry, and which of those qualities have helped you thrive in your own career?
Three things: resilience, curiosity, and being comfortable as the least expert person in the room.
Resilience, because this industry moves fast and doesn’t wait for you. Things fall over. Launches slip. Regulation shifts. Somebody has to be the calm one and make the call when challenges and change are inevitable.
Curiosity, because the moment you stop asking how things actually work – the tech, the maths, the regulation, the player – you start becoming decorative. That’s truer now than ever. AI is rewriting what a marketing channel even is, and the only way through that is to stay genuinely interested in it.
The third one I learned in construction. I was often the youngest person on site and very often the only woman. You learn quickly to ask the question anyway, and not to perform certainty you don’t have. That has served me better than anything else on my CV.
And I’d add warmth. Being decent to people isn’t a soft skill, it’s most of the job. My family are my MVPs on that front – they keep me grounded, and they remind me daily why integrity matters. For me, that’s the single biggest thing a leader has to earn – trust.
What advice do you have for women seeking careers in gaming?
Stop waiting to feel ready.
I changed industries with no gaming experience whatsoever. Nobody handed me permission – I decided the transferable skills were real, and went and proved it. They were, and I did.
Three practical things.
Ask for the thing. The meeting invite, the project, the promotion. The worst outcome is a no, and some useful direction.
Find sponsors, not just mentors. A mentor advises you. A sponsor says your name in a room you’re not in. You need both, and the second is harder to ask for – so ask anyway.
Bring your whole self. I’m Irish, I talk fast, I lead with people, and I want people to feel something. Ten years ago I’d have thought those were things to tone down. They’re the reason I’m any good at this, and I lean into it now.
This industry needs your perspective far more than it needs another version of what it already has.
