Veteran gaming executive Virginia McDowell will be honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the upcoming East Coast Gaming Congress & NexGen Gaming Forum (ECGC). McDowell will be the fourth gaming leader to ever receive such an honor, and it will be presented as the conference celebrates its Silver Jubilee September 21-23 at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Atlantic City.
McDowell, who served as the only female president and chief executive officer of a major gaming operating company from 2007 until her retirement from Isle of Capri Casinos in April 2016, has had a storied career rising through the industry’s ranks, including working for 16 years in the Atlantic City market.
As a gaming pioneer, she was the first female board member of the American Gaming Association, as well as the first woman inducted into the Mississippi Gaming Hall of Fame. She presently serves as a non-executive director of Entain PLC, as well as a vice president of Global Gaming Women, a nonprofit she co-founded in 2016 with a mission to support, inspire and influence the development of women in the gaming industry through education and mentoring.
Conference co-founders Michael Pollock and Lloyd D. Levenson issued the following statement: “In a career that has extended over four decades, Virginia McDowell has been a mentor to many, and a pioneer for women seeking to gain a foothold and build careers in this industry. We want to shine a light on her accomplishments, and to help inspire others to walk through the doors she has helped open.”
That theme of promoting inclusion will extend to the ECGC program signature events—the Industry Leaders Roundtables. Those sessions will include a candid discussion of what it will take for women and minorities to ascend to corporate leadership positions in the industry. The sessions, moderated by Juliann Barreto, chief operating officer of Spectrum Gaming Group, and Lynne Levin Kaufman, co-chair, Gaming & iGaming Practice Group, Cooper Levenson, will feature nine of the gaming industry’s top global leaders.
The conference will feature three keynote addresses and several panel discussions on issues facing the industry. The full two-day conference schedule and registration is at ecgc.us.
ECGC is organized and produced by Cooper Levenson, Attorneys at Law, Spectrum Gaming Group, Esports Entertainment Group, and Sports Illustrated Sportsbook.
