Marie Ablaza

Marie is a Recruiter for Netflix Games Studio with 10 years of experience across the entertainment and video game industries. She has built a strong personal brand on LinkedIn as the “Fairy Job Mother” and runs The Fairy and the Force, a blog focused on helping people with career search strategies. At Netflix, Marie is helping build the dream team that will develop and publish games for the platform. Her love of people and video games makes her a natural connector and community builder in the games industry. She is passionate about helping others discover their authentic selves, reach their potential, and connect with opportunities where they can do their best work—always adding a bit of magic and fun along the way.

You Can’t Rebuild With Old Habits: Talent Acquisition as the Engine of Rebuilding

In this roundtable, we’ll have the uncomfortable conversation: why haven’t we truly invested in recruiting as a strategic capability, and what is that costing us now? We’ll dig into why TA rarely gets a seat at the table when projects are greenlit, scaled, or shut down; why we’re still defaulting to “industry veterans only” in a supposed era of rebuilding; and how taking real risks—early talent, non-traditional backgrounds, and actual change management around hiring—could unlock the next chapter for studios.