Celebrating Excellence: PG Connects Nordics 2026 Honors Trailblazing Women with the Aurora Initiative

The vibrant landscape of the Nordic games industry was celebrated in Helsinki last week as the annual PG Connects Nordics 2026 conference played host to the prestigious Aurora initiative. Announced live on stage and presented by Paige Cook, the special ceremony honored five industry-leading women whose exceptional vision, talent, and leadership are leaving an indelible mark on every corner of the regional and global gaming sector.

The Nordic games ecosystem has long been recognized as a powerhouse of creativity, technical innovation, and artistic expression. At the very heart of this thriving community are women whose groundbreaking work consistently inspires, challenges, and pushes the medium forward. From visionary artists and immersive sound designers to brilliant writers, programmers, producers, and trailblazing entrepreneurs, women are actively shaping the future of interactive entertainment. The Aurora initiative serves to shine a vital spotlight on these leaders, acknowledging their profound impact on studio cultures, business strategies, and player experiences.

This year’s cohort of honourees represents a diverse cross-section of the games industry, spanning technical development, executive leadership, business infrastructure, and advocacy. Based on the extensive nominations received by the organizers, the five celebrated professionals embody the pinnacle of modern gaming expertise.

Emmi Kuusikko, Head of Product at GameHouse, was recognized for a career spanning two decades, during which she has consistently helped leading studios build successful games and services across mobile, PC, and console platforms. According to her nomination, Kuusikko uniquely combines a deep, rigorous understanding of product strategy, business metrics, and data analytics with genuine empathy for her colleagues and players alike. She possesses a rare ability to understand the perspectives of vastly different disciplines within a studio environment, effectively building bridges between technical, creative, and commercial teams. By listening carefully and valuing individual team members, she fosters strong, resilient teams built on mutual trust. Her leadership style brings warmth and human connection to high-pressure production environments while maintaining clear, actionable strategic direction. As the broader games industry navigates the complex challenges and opportunities of the artificial intelligence era, Kuusikko has adopted a characteristically thoughtful approach, looking far beyond short-term technological novelties to identify practical ways AI can improve internal organizations, strengthen core products, and deliver more personalized experiences to players.

The commercial and infrastructural backbone of the industry was likewise celebrated through Jessica Nylund, Business Development Director at Reaktor. Nylund leads business development for Reaktor’s Gaming and Entertainment practice, where she is responsible for building and cultivating deep, long-term relationships with some of the world’s most demanding game companies, including major global publishers and high-scale live-service studios. Her complex portfolio of work spans critical technical and operational domains such as web commerce, player identity management, first-party data strategies, AI-assisted player support, and comprehensive game operations. These are precisely the foundational infrastructure layers that keep modern games commercially sustainable in a hyper-competitive global market. Operating at this elite level of business development requires navigating intricate, senior-level corporate environments where professional trust compounds slowly and can evaporate instantaneously. Nylund has successfully and consistently managed these high-stakes relationships across diverse international geographies and vastly different types of gaming organizations. Through this dedication, she has played a central role in establishing Reaktor as a premium, trusted partner in a market segment characterized by an abundance of competing vendors.

Advocacy, education, and systemic industry change formed another pillar of this year’s accolades, personified by Jenny Brusk, Innovation Manager at Sweden Game Arena and co-founder of Donna. With three decades of extensive experience in the games industry, Brusk has established herself as a passionate and unwavering advocate for gender equality and inclusive workplace cultures. During her tenure at the University of Skövde, she founded Donna, an organization that has played a fundamental role in attracting and supporting female students entering game development academic programs. Donna remains dedicated to fostering diversity and inclusion within the Swedish games industry, placing a specialized focus on encouraging female, trans, and non-binary individuals to explore, pursue, and sustain rewarding careers in game development. In her current role at Sweden Game Arena, Brusk continues this vital mission through Donna by actively supporting female game entrepreneurs as they find their footing in the commercial landscape, while simultaneously helping graduating students successfully transition from academia into professional industry roles.

On the creative front, Mathilde Garreau, Lead Concept Artist at SYBO, was honored for her instrumental role in shaping the visual identity of some of the world’s most successful mobile games. Garreau has spent more than seven years contributing to the creative direction of SYBO, most notably working on Subway Surfers, which stands as the most downloaded mobile game of all time. Over the past four years in her capacity as Lead Concept Artist, she has been pivotal in evolving the visual universe of the franchise, injecting vibrant life, rich color, distinct humor, and memorable personality into a game enjoyed by more than 150 million active monthly players globally. This role requires maintaining an extraordinarily demanding live-ops content pipeline, through which Garreau consistently delivers high-quality conceptual designs for environments and characters on a strict weekly basis. Beyond her formidable artistic output, Garreau leads a fully female concept art team and is widely recognized internally for cultivating a supportive, uplifting, and collaborative studio environment.

Rounding out this year’s distinguished group of honourees is Parker Barry, Founder and Head of Studio at Mugwort Studios. For the preceding six years, Barry held prominent product and marketing leadership roles at Toca Boca, where she served as a dedicated advocate for tween girls, actively working to support their mental health and emotional well-being through thoughtfully designed digital games. She consistently championed a holistic perspective and pushed for systematic design changes centered on the specific needs of tween girls, prioritizing their psychological safety and digital health. During her time at Toca Boca, she also led the company’s internal diversity and inclusion group, advocating for a bold, uncompromising stance on inclusive representation in children’s media. Her efforts culminated in helping push for the public announcement of the company’s first openly queer character, marking a significant milestone in corporate inclusive representation. Transitioning from major studio leadership to entrepreneurship, Barry now leads Mugwort Studios alongside a majority-female founding team. The studio focuses on crafting video games tailored for non-competitive players, fulfilling her ongoing mission to carve out more professional space for women in the industry while designing games that directly meet the overlooked psychological and emotional needs of women in the wider market.

The Aurora initiative continues to build upon a rich tradition of recognizing exceptional women at PG Connects events around the world, drawing support from organizations such as Women in Games. As the Nordic games sector looks toward the future, the contributions of leaders like Kuusikko, Nylund, Brusk, Garreau, and Barry serve as an enduring reminder of the talent, resilience, and vision driving the global gaming community forward.