GLAAD Gaming Pronounces Cohort for 2026 Queer Emerging Developers Program

In 2025, GLAAD Gaming introduced the Queer Emerging Developers (QED) program, created to help LGBTQ online game builders at pivotal moments of their careers. The program gives significant entry to trade alternatives and training about LGBTQ illustration in video video games. Supported by Logitech and a partnership with the GDC Festival of Gaming, QED gives mentorship by the GLAAD Gaming crew and trade professionals, in addition to a complimentary go to the GDC Festival of Gaming.

The GLAAD Gaming crew acquired lots of of purposes from present and aspiring builders, spanning a variety of disciplines and backgrounds. The builders chosen for QED’s first cohort show promise of their subject, an admirable ardour for video video games, and true dedication to championing LGBTQ inclusion within the office and within the media they create. 

With that, GLAAD Gaming is proud to announce the cohort members within the inaugural Queer Emerging Developers program:

Natalie Checo is a Writer, Community Manager, and Social Media Manager within the video video games trade. She presently works at Sunset Visitor and Black Tabby Games, together with her earlier locations of employment being at Future Friends Games as a PR Consultant and at Fanbyte (RIP) as its Assistant Managing Editor. As a recipient of The Game Awards’ Future Class induction, the Game Devs of Color GDC scholarship, and now the GLAAD Emerging Developers award, her mission is to inform tales that empower queer women and girls of shade to embrace their multitudes and pursue seemingly unattainable goals. She was born in Florida and is the proud daughter of a Nicaraguan immigrant and a first-generation Cuban. When she’s not taking part in video games, studying books, or writing fanfiction, yow will discover her petting her cute and bratty cat named Yennefer.

Jake Crabtree is a technical recreation designer who’s obsessed with creating enjoyable mechanics, novel programs, and emotional, queer tales in video games. He beforehand labored as a designer and engineer on the comfy, location-based pet recreation Peridot, at Niantic, and as a technical designer on Blackbird, a cancelled multiplayer recreation at Zenimax Online Studios. At Niantic, he was additionally a lead of Compass, an LGBTQ worker useful resource group, and created in-game occasions for Pride and inner programming for queer Niantics and allies. Recently, he has began serving to out as a technical designer on Eggstinct, a cooperative multiplayer recreation, and on Ironroot Games’ unannounced mission. He lives in San Francisco, CA together with his accomplice, Isiac, and cute canine, Daisy, and out of doors of labor loves tabletop video games, mixing cocktails, scary films, and has just lately began studying to offer Tarot readings.

Isaac “Iz” Green is a UK-based Technical Artist with 3 years expertise working in AAA improvement on international titles. He has a ardour for procedural efficiency options and asset optimisation and enjoys artistic downside fixing and making instruments for artists. Isaac has spoken on panels and delivered talks to varsities and universities and is obsessed with how builders work with training suppliers to help less-represented teams to reach the rising trade.

Moroi Kho is a personality artist within the video games trade, with nearly 3 years of trade expertise. She has labored in quite a lot of types throughout a number of revealed titles and enjoys each stylized and lifelike workflows. She can also be a proud trans girl and LGBTQ activist with a ardour for supporting and interesting with the native queer neighborhood. Moroi has assisted her neighborhood by means of medical advocacy, campaigning for extra accessible look after the broader neighborhood. She additionally has expertise working a help group serving to folks entry secure and dependable hormone remedies and correctly perceive the dangers, advantages, and optimum strategies to allow them to determine which pathways is likely to be proper for them, with direct correspondence to educated medical professionals within the subject and direct citations to medical analysis papers on the topic. Moroi is at all times in search of new methods to have interaction and uplift different LGBTQ folks the place she will!

Éadie Long is an Irish artistic primarily based in Dublin. They work as a story designer on Star Trek Fleet Command, a cellular technique recreation. For them, video games are the right automobile for optimistic illustration. Their interactive nature brings the viewers into the characters’ lived expertise, thus constructing empathy and connection. When writing LGBTQ characters, Éadie avoids making their queerness central to their battle, eager to discover queer pleasure as a substitute of struggling. They get pleasure from writing settings the place queerness isn’t punished, and themes of otherness and identification may be explored by means of totally different lenses. They wish to reimagine real-world points whereas balancing frightening thought and offering escape. In their free time, Éadie likes to write down tales, make music, and discover new locations. Their work has been revealed in Sans. PRESS and Voidspace, and so they received the 2025 Directed by Her Best Screenplay award. 

Kimari Rennis is an Assistant Producer at Lucasfilm Games and a Contributing Writer for the New York Video Game Critics Circle. Having been a gamer because the age of 5 on the Gameboy Advance SP and graduated from the NYU Game Center with a level in Game Design a few years later, Kimari carries her love of video video games and recreation manufacturing in every single place she goes. She’s been within the video games trade since she was 14, passionately writing recreation opinions as a highschool intern, and has labored on initiatives with Rockstar Games, Warner Bros. Games, and Second Dinner. She now works on the most recent Star Wars titles in San Francisco and is optimistic about what the long run holds for the video games trade. Her favourite video games are Terraria and modded Terraria if that claims something about her.

Congratulations to the 2026 QED cohort members! Stay tuned for extra updates on the QED program and this 12 months’s cohort all through the approaching months.