How Blizzard hires a vice president of culture to fix its culture

At Blizzard Entertainment, we pour our hearts and souls into everything we create. We embrace our core values every day so that we can continue creating epic entertainment experiences for all our players. It doesn’t matter who you are or where you’re located—if you’re a member of our evolving and vibrant community, working with us at one of our offices around the globe, or taking a piece of Blizzard with you into space, you’re welcome here.

In January, Blizzard president Mike the work we are doing to rebuild your trust in Blizzard, and included descriptions of several full-time leadership roles dedicated to changing the culture. It appears that two of the spots have been filled, as Activision Blizzard appointed Kristen Hines as its new chief diversity, equity, and inclusion officer and today Blizzard Entertainment announced Jessica Martinez as its first vice president, head of culture.

According to Blizzard, her responsibilities include growing and implementing our culture strategy, ensuring alignment across all teams and functions, and revamping learning and talent development programs. The announcement says she's leading the learning and development team, while working with communications, events, and each of the franchise and functional leaders.

Martinez is credited with 14 years of leading strategy, communications, operations, and employee experience at Disney. Beyond those positions, post mentioned bringing in a new organizational leader for Human Resources who will build trust, empower our teams, and help foster a safe, positive work environment for everyone. He also said that compensation for executives would depend on their success in creating a safe, inclusive, and creative work environment at Blizzard.

Most people think of a blizzard as a bad snowstorm, but a winter storm must meet certain criteria to be classified as a blizzard. According to the National Weather Service, a blizzard is a weather event that includes low temperatures, wind speeds greater than 56 kilometers (35 miles) per hour, and a large amount of falling or blowing snow that lowers visibility to 0.4 kilometers (0.25 mile) for a minimum of three hours. These whiteout conditions can cause car accidents and people on foot to become lost. Additionally, the colder temperatures that often follow a blizzard can put people at risk of frostbite or hypothermia.

A ground blizzard occurs when there is no falling snow, but snow is drifting and blowing near the ground.



The name originated in the central United States, where blizzards are brought by northwesterly winds following winter depressions, or low-pressure systems.

In the United States and in England, the term is often used for any strong, heavy snowstorm with wind. In Antarctica, blizzards are associated with winds spilling over the edge of the ice plateau at an average velocity of 160 km (about 100 miles) per hour

The game's industry is ever-changing. Technology improves, techniques change, and design philosophies become outdated. Since the founding of Blizzard Entertainment, we’ve worked to improve through experience, teaching one another and cultivating the desire to be the best at what we do. We see this as an individual responsibility as well as a company one. Employees can count on their peers, managers, and the company itself to be supportive and help them gain the knowledge and training they need.