HELEN CHIANG

CV

Helen Chiang joined the interactive entertainment business arm of Microsoft in 2008, working as group business manager of subscriptions. Just under two years later, she moved up to director of Xbox Live business strategy, creating the service’s model map to better align the company’s business goals and investments with the platform’s roadmap. She continued to climb through the ranks, helping ship games such as World Of Tanks on Xbox 360 and Killer Instinct on Xbox One. She also got the Xbox 360 version of Minecraft out of the door, which was the first step to her appointment as senior director of Minecraft franchise business and strategy during the Mojang acquisition in 2014. Now, she’s one of Minecraft’s most senior figures, while continuing to rock one of the most unashamedly Minecraftian Twitter handles we’ve seen.

As head of Minecraft, Helen Chiang must wear many hats. Sometimes, she’s working closely with Microsoft’s technology teams, helping to decide how best the company’s latest innovations can develop Minecraft into a more advanced and inclusive experience; other times, she’s getting to know Minecraft’s huge community of players, talking to them to discover what they want most out of their experience with the game. Now, she’s really out in the field with Minecraft Earth, one of the guiding figures helping both Microsoft and Mojang to understand the real value of their ambitious project, and to figure out how Earth really might be used to build a better world for its players.

You’re head of , which is perhaps the coolest job title in videogames. What