Guest Speaker: Howard Donaldson - Lunar Owl Consulting
Howard Donaldson is a proven business leader in the video games industry globally with over 20 years of experience at high profile companies and organizations.
Currently, Howard is CEO of Lunar Owl Consulting in Santa Monica, CA offering mentorship, business consulting, strategic planning, business development, fund raising and M&A services primarily for video game companies. He has successfully raised capital for several companies in Canada and throughout the world, provided strategic planning and evaluated the sale of several companies.
Previously, Howard was a Partner for Vanedge Capital in Vancouver, a successful $300 million venture capital fund investing in technology, digital media and video game companies with a superior track record of company exits, investor distributions and investment returns.
Howard was Vice President of Studio Operations for Disney Interactive with oversight for all internal studios globally, directed strategic planning, established new studios and implemented studio best practices. Howard also co-founded Propaganda Games in Vancouver employing over 200 employees and later sold the studio to The Walt Disney Company. Propaganda Games developed and released Turok and Tron console games.
Howard was Vice President/ CFO for Electronic Arts Canada. Howard was hired from Disney to build and implement a strategic plan to scale the studio into one of the largest game studios in the world. As an active member of the executive team with broad responsibilities, he was responsible for directing the first strategic and business plans that resulted in annual double-digit growth in revenue to $1 billion, creating one of the largest interactive studios in the world. This growth resulted from a FIFA expansion plan and new product initiatives for NFS Underground, SSX, Def Jam, NBA Street and Fight Night.
Howard was an active leader in the digital media industry in British Columbia and served as Chair and President for DigiBC, the industry association for digital media in British Columbia; one of the largest digital media clusters globally. He was responsible for the original investment in the Centre for Digital Media (GNWC), the innovative digital media tax credit and fostering working relationships with Sony, Pixar, Microsoft, Bandai Namco and Lucas Arts to establish operations in British Columbia.
Howard also serves as a Director on several Boards including AMPD, GoodGamer, TCI Entertainment and The18.
Howard earned a BBA from the University of Michigan and an MBA from the University of Detroit. He also earned a CPA designation with experience at PwC.