A raft of esports talent, both at a player level and those working behind the scenes, has been highlighted in the 2022 Forbes 30 Under 30 lists.
Hundreds have been recognised around the world for 2022 in categories including entertainment, finance, media and marketing, sports and games, retail and commerce and more.
As we’re based in the UK, we’ll look mainly at the European names on the lists, but we’ve also attempted to cover esports talent in other territories too, including Forbes’ main North America market.
Speaking of the UK, Mike Craddock and Chris Parnell of Kairos Group have been named in the entertainment category for Europe.
Kairos is a gaming and esports marketing company which has offices in London, Manchester, North Carolina and Chicago.
Chris and Mike are co-founders of Kairos, which recently acquired Manchester-based gaming content and esports organisation Horizon Union.
Looking at the sports and games list for Europe, Team Vitality co-founder Fabien Devide has received a mention, as has Arthur Guisasola, sports partnerships lead at TikTok UK.
Navi’s Ukrainian CSGO superstar Oleksandr ‘s1mple’ Kostyliev has been featured, alongside sporting greats like Charles LeClerc and Kylian Mbappe.
Michaela ‘mimi’ Lintrup is another esports player that has been included in the sports and games list for Europe – she’s part of G2’s all-women Valorant team Gozen, who won the Valorant Game Changers earlier this year.
Team Heretics co-founders Antonio Catena Poderoso, Jorge Orejudo González and Arnau Vidal have been included, and on the streamer side of things, Spanish personality and caster Ibai has made the cut too.
Then, looking more behind the scenes, London-based Piers Kicks, who is leading the crypto divisions of venture capital firms Delphi Digital and gaming and esports-focused Bitkraft, is featured in the sports and games list for Europe as well.
Others featured include Robbie Singh, CEO of Omeda Studios, Kat Welsford, digital analyst at Square Enix, and Vera Wienken, brand manager at Riot Games, who helped launch the Game Changers program for women in esports.
And finally, across the pond, there were plenty of names in the 2022 Forbes 30 Under 30 list for games in North America.
Respected esports journalist Jacob Wolf received a mention, as did TSM VP of operations Walter Wang, OpTic Texas pro gamer Scump, Tekken player Cuddle Core, 100 Thieves streamer Valkyrae, StarCraft II champion Scarlett, games writer and former journalist Alanah Pearce and others.
Twitch’s strategic partner manager Ana Sena and Riot’s Victoria Caña and Shelby Ulisse were mentioned.
Last year, UK esports organisation founders Kieran Holmes-Darby and Ilias ‘Rai’ Pajoheshfar were included in the 2021 Forbes 30 Under 30 for Europe.
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
