She’s a gamer girl, in a gamer world. Remember when esports was weird and geeky? Nicole LaPointe Jameson does, but she made it so much cooler when she rose to a final-level boss in the industry. The Forbes 30 Under 30 alumnus is CEO of gaming company Evil Geniuses—which is kind of what you have to be to make it in the billion-dollar biz.

We asked the bundle of joy(stick) about taking the Rainbow Road to the top, how she’s adding more women and POCs to her own league of legends, and whether the gaming industry really is all that. (PS5: It is.)

For those who don’t know, what’s an esports company?
Evil Geniuses is a competitive video games team. An analogy I always use is, we’re like a university, so we have one brand but a bunch of different teams that compete in different games [like Valorant and Dota 2].

How did you get into the industry?
I’ve always loved gaming. [Due to an Achilles injury,] I was immobile for a lot of my childhood, so gaming was my social connection. But as I kept going through life, careers in gaming were not a thing. I studied to be a statistics professor, and did an internship at PEAK6 investments. I ended up falling in love with the entrepreneurial spirit, and they had a program where they took undergrads and threw them straight into investing and operating portfolio company businesses.

So you started in finance?
I worked in private equity. When I had enough wins under my belt, I focused on my own investments under PEAK6, which revolved around gaming, AR, VR, and tech. At that time, esports was becoming popular from a mainstream capital allocation point of view. Jump ahead to January 2019, and we were deep in the diligence of Evil Geniuses, which had a wonderful brand but was looking for cash and leadership to best utilize that money. I left PEAK6, rolled into Evil Geniuses, and haven’t looked back since.

Many shows depict an awkward tension when a “suit from the firm” suddenly takes over a growing company. Did you feel like an outsider coming into the role?
That was definitely one of the scarier elements for me, like, “How do I navigate this space?” Historically, gaming has been very cliquey. Part of that is because it was traditionally underfunded, underloved, and came with negative stereotypes. For veterans of the space, there’s a well-deserved chip on their shoulders, and I came in as a triple whammy, right? I was from this private equity firm, I’m a woman, and I’m a person of color.

That sounds like a lot to deal with.
My differences made me nervous, but since I had spent so many months in the due diligence process with the internal EG team, I felt like I had already been working with them. The transition to a network of people who were excited about my changes made it much easier. I can also say—and I did not expect this from the gaming space—that like attracts like. Within my first 3 weeks on the job, women’s organizations and POC in gaming organizations reached out and made sure people knew they were excited to see the work I would do. Everyone knows the space can be rife with toxicity and bullying, but I’ve had a good network to shelter me.

Now that you’re in this space, is it a goal of yours to bring in other women and POC?
This is a little bit of why I love what I do. If esports is only a certain demographic of people, the space is screwed. My investors believe in this too, so I have the luxury of being able to focus on finding the best talent. Just in my 3 years, seeing the changes at EG—like having an over-50% female leadership team, over 50% people of color across the organization on the staff side—has been really exciting.

You’re also an advisor for the*gameHERS. What work do you do with them?
It’s a fantastic organization focused on creating and maintaining an inclusive hub for women in the gaming space. I was inducted as an advisor [to help answer], “How do we lessen that gap of the number of women gamers?” About 45% of US gamers are women, but in competitive play, less than 3% are. This is a joint mission [to fix that], and I’m very excited to help move the*gameHERS forward.

Do you still game in your free time?
I am a big role-playing game fan or massively multiplayer online game fan. That being said, the biggest lie I was told coming into this space was, “Oh, you’ll have so much time to play!” The past 3 years have been my lowest hours in availability to sit down and game, which is a bummer. But hey, at least no one batted an eye when I had to take a day off for releases of special titles!