Any great effort starts with a great team.
Here’s our starting lineup.
Steven Dooner | CEO
Steven has spent the past 45 years developing, operating, and rescuing concepts and companies in this industry. Beginning in the late 1970’s at CEC (Chuck E. Cheese) where he personally helped open dozens of locations, Steven left the company when it had amassed 100 locations in just five years. He helped arrange the acquisition and turnaround of Malibu Grand Prix from Warner Communications where he increased same store sales 39% the first year. He helped develop the Club Disney, ESPNZone, and DisneyQuest concepts at Disney (he would later return to Disney to help oversee the expansion of the Tokyo park). He has helped build theme parks for Disney, Universal Studios and others. He has increased same store sales and turned around concepts like Malibu Grand Prix, Discovery Zone and others. He also served as CEO of Sega GameWorks after acquiring the company in 2010.
Brian Rogers | CFO
With nearly 40 years’ experience, Brian has worked around the globe leading large teams in the expansion of major capital projects for The Walt Disney Company, Universal Studios, Microsoft, Sony, Safeway and others. Most recently, he established and led Universal Studios’ WFOE office in Beijing for development of the new Universal Studios Resort where he mentored and provided guidance to the core group of management staff that continues to run the startup operation (Legal, Finance, Government Relations, HR, IT, Office Management, Administration). Prior to his four years at Universal, Brian spent three years at Walt Disney Imagineering where he was VP of Project Controls overseeing the development of Shanghai Disneyland. At WDI, he helped reduce the capital budget in Shanghai by $300MM. He spearheaded the Disney/Shendi joint venture as Disney needed in-country/onsite leadership to take the Shanghai Resort project from the drawing board to execution. Brian navigated the arcane legal and cultural intricacies of doing business in China.
Eddie Sotto
Eddie is an award winning designer, creative professional and entrepreneur with a proven track record in entertainment design. Sotto's strength lies both in vision, solutions, and team based execution, skills he honed as Senior Vice President of Concept Design at Disney's Imagineering division, where he ran his own concept development studio. His portfolio at Disney alone contains $500m in built projects ranging from "E-Ticket" Attractions and retail, restaurants, web and mobile technology, including digital architecture like ABC Times Square Studios. Quitting Disney in 2000, Sotto exported his skills to reimagine and reinvent brands and places as experiences. Working cross-platform, Sotto expanded to innovate in the fields of marketing, AR/VR, and network television.
Chris Adelmann
Chris Adelmann is an executive with global experience in establishing, growing and managing global brands around the world; including identifying, structuring and negotiating operating partnerships, investments and joint ventures. Sectors have included media and entertain men t, consumer brands, real estate and leisure and hospitality. He has been Executive Vice President of Live Nation; Executive Vice President at Warner Brothers International Theatres; he has advised the likes of GE Capital, Clarity Partners, Onex Capital, Loews Cineplex, Tudor Capital, the Dubai government, and others.
Sheri Kiddoo
Sheri has over a decade of experience in Hospitality and Entertainment projects worldwide. She earned her Interior Design degree from Seminole State College of Florida. Upon graduation she joined the Universal Creative Team in Orlando where she held interior design leadership roles while assisting in the development of hospitality, resort, and entertainment projects worldwide.
Silver Padilla
Silver is well connected in online gaming communities. Having been a competitive gamer himself, he also helped build many esports startups and teams, and is in touch with some of the world’s best competitive gamer's and teams. As the Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Esports Labs, Inc, Silver leads and manages our team to stay focused and on task with designing and building one of the most innovative, if not the most innovative, esports focused network and ecosystems to date. He is a creative strategic planner with proven ability to identify and develop key market opportunities with successful and favorable outcomes.
Glenn Golenberg
Glenn has over forty years of investment banking, strategic and financial advisory to a wide variety of businesses. Glenn has arranged financing in excess of $2 billion and has served as financial advisor and investor in over 200 transactions. Glenn is also Managing Director of The Bellwether Group, a merchant bank providing strategic and financial advisory services to expansion-stage emerging technology life-science, and consumer related companies – e.g. iRace, Virtual Media. A Wharton MBA, Glenn has served on numerous school boards in his career: Wharton Graduate Board, USC Visiting Committee, Case Western Reserve University- Weatherhead School of Management, International Co-Chairman Recanati Business School (Tel Aviv University), Lecturer Advisor - Anderson Business School- UCLA.
Lisa Thomson
Lisa brings her background in interior design and business analytics to the Company. Having helped negotiate the acquisition and turnaround of Sega GameWorks among other projects, Lisa conveys a different perspective to operations – looking at the sensory angle to driving sales.
Gene Cameron
Gene led Chiat/Day and BBDO/West advertising agencies producing campaigns for Apple, Nike, Porsche, Pizza Hut, Fox Network and The Disney Channel. He held executive marketing positions at the L.A. Rams, Baja Fresh, BizRate.com, Evolution Robotics and Dataium.com, totaling four startups all with successful exits.
Terri Matera
An innovative and creative Merchandising Director with 15+ years experience and proven success of specialty store and e-commerce brand creation, product development and merchandise management. Expert in identifying and executing emerging and relevant lifestyle trends, brands and multi category product assortments.
Louis Dienes
Louis Dienes is an experienced corporate lawyer with over 25 years of experience advising boards, management and investors in domestic and international mergers, acquisitions and dispositions, equity and debt finance, and day-to-day operations, having closed transactions with over $10 billion in aggregate value. In addition to being a senior partner of a major international law firm, Louis was the general counsel of a private equity backed multinational with operations throughout the Americas, EMEA and APAC through a period of high growth.