San Francisco, Ca., USA - April 23, 2014, San Francisco, Ca., USA - Zynga Inc., a social game developer, announced that it has hired Alex Garden as president of Zynga Studios.
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Mr. Garden brings with him 25 years of entertainment industry experience, and a history of architecting consumer entertainment experiences across video, music, free-to-play and console games.
Mr. Garden joins Zynga from Microsoft Corporation, where he held the positions of General Manager for Xbox LIVE and Xbox Music, Video and Reading. He helped scale Xbox to 41 countries and tens of millions of subscribers featuring partners like HBO, Netflix and ESPN.
Prior to that, Mr. Garden was at Nexon Co. Ltd., a South Korean developer and publisher of video games, where he served as Chief Executive Officer of Nexon Publishing North America, the company's North American game development unit. Before Nexon, he founded Vancouver-based game developer Relic Entertainment.
The company also announced that, as Chief Marketing Officer, Jennifer Nuckles will lead Zynga's marketing, publishing and brand efforts.
Ms. Nuckles, a consumer marketer with more than 18 years of experience, most recently served as Chief Marketing Officer of Plum District, an e-commerce platform for women.
The company also announced that its Founder Mark Pincus has decided to move on from his operational role as Chief Product Officer at Zynga to focus on serving in his role as Chairman of the Board of Directors.
Mr. Pincus is Founder, Chief Product Officer, and Chairman of the Board of Directors. He founded the company in 2007 and served as its Chief Executive Officer for six years.
He also founded Zynga.org, a nonprofit organization dedicated to using social games for social good that has raised more than $15 million by connecting more than 1 million players with more than 50 nonprofit organizations around the world.
In 2013, Zynga.org partnered with NewSchools Venture Fund to create an education technology accelerator.
In 1995, Mr. Pincus founded FreeLoader, the first web-based push company. Later, he founded Support.com, a pioneer in automating tech support, and took it public. ■