Riot Games acknowledged it has work to do addressing a sexist work culture and other diversity issues. To address that, the maker of League of Legends said it had hired diversity, leadership, and strategy expert Frances Frei as a senior adviser.
The company said in a blog post that former Uber leader Frei will advise the “culture strike team” and executive team. Riot recently apologized for allowing an admittedly sexist culture that was exposed in an in-depth Kotaku report.
“Two weeks ago, we shared a message about our first steps in the evolution of Riot, including accelerating diversity and inclusion initiatives, rebuilding our culture, and launching third-party evaluations of systems and processes,” Riot said. “Throughout her career, Frances has helped many companies evolve and navigate change to achieve their full potential, and we’re humbled that she’s chosen to work with us.”
Riot leaders Nicolo Laurent (CEO), Scott Gelb (chief operating officer), Dylan Jadeja (president), and cofounders Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill have been meeting with Frei over the past few weeks and she has “begun intensive work with our cultural transformation team,” Riot said.
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The company said that, after doing the meetings, Frei said, “After spending time with Riot’s leadership and many others across the organization, it became clear that Riot is truly putting everything on the table and committing to evolving its culture. In my interactions with Rioters, I’ve seen extraordinary levels of engagement on these issues across the company. Every Rioter with whom I’ve met truly cares about inclusion, which means real change is possible. Riot isn’t interested simply in fixing problems on the surface, it has the ambition to be an industry leader and to provide a roadmap for others to follow. I share that ambition and am eager to help Riot navigate this process.”
She added, “Riot isn’t interested simply in fixing problems on the surface, they have an ambition to be an industry leader and to provide a road map for others to follow. I share that ambition and am eager to help them navigate this process.”
Frei is an expert in using diversity and inclusion as a tool for improving performance. In addition to her work with Riot, Frei is launching The Leadership Consortium, a leadership accelerator that will build inclusive executive teams and elevate diverse leaders to senior levels of the world’s most influential organizations.
She holds a doctorate in Operations and Information Management from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and she is the UPS Foundation Professor of Service Management at the Harvard Business School.
