Room 8 Group appoints Juanita Draude as CEO

• She previously held roles at Monks, Publicis Groupe, the NBA, and NBCUniversal.
• Room 8 Group has worked on franchises including Call of Duty, Diablo, Assassin’s Creed, and Star Trek.
• The company currently employs around 1,000 creatives across Europe, North America, and South America.

External game development partner Room 8 Group has appointed Juanita Draude as chief executive officer to lead the company's next phase of its growth and evolution.

Draude succeeded Anna Kozlova, who led the company for seven years as it expanded into a global external game development partner.

She joins Room 8 Group with more than 20 years of experience across media, technology, and entertainment, having previously held leadership roles at Monks, Publicis Groupe, National Basketball Association, and NBCUniversal. 

“I’m excited to step into this role at such an important moment for both Room 8 Group and the industry as a whole," said Draude. 

“Games today are built through increasingly complex, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and our focus is on evolving Room 8 Group into a truly integrated, technology-driven partner that can support developers and publishers across the full production lifecycle.

“My experience in media, entertainment, and advertising reinforces the importance of building trusted long-term partnerships around great audience experiences - and that’s exactly the direction we will continue to strengthen at Room 8 Group.”

Strategic moves

Founded in 2011, Room 8 Group provides game development, technology, art, trailers, and QA services for triple-A and double-A projects, working with publishers including Microsoft, Nintendo, Ubisoft, Sony, Gameloft, Take2, and EA.

Room 8 chief content officer Julien Proux said the appointment aligns with the company’s ongoing transformation into a more integrated and technology-enabled development organisation.

“Through this re-thinking of our organisation and infrastructure Room 8 Group has evolved beyond traditional service delivery toward connected production ecosystems that combine creative, engineering, and operational expertise within a unified execution framework," said Proux.

“As development cycles become more complex and partners look for greater predictability and integration, that operational maturity becomes increasingly strategic for our key partners.”