Theo Priestley – Narrative Designer and Game Writer

This was me in a former life. While a lot of my career was in senior corporate positions, there are some common themes throughout – mainly that I was driven to translate very dry corporate language and turn it into story-driven narratives about the company, the products and problems they solved.

In 2023, after Metanomic was acquired, I decided to take a sabbatical from the corporate world to figure out what I wanted to do next. One of the main goals was to focus more on my creative passions and work in an industry that could sharpen them.

I was fortunate in my previous career to build a large network of contacts across many industries, including video games and movie production.

After a few discussions, I secured initial consulting work by pitching a well-known game studio to help turn one of its long-running sci-fi franchises into a television series.

That led to being hired as a Narrative Designer and Game Writer.

And the rest is not only history, but just the beginning of a new career.

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Previous Career

A senior-level corporate executive experienced in operational, strategic, and financial management and accountability across a variety of sectors, including financial services, enterprise software, video games, and
startups.

Proven track record of leading and executing initiatives designed to elevate brand advocacy and messaging beyond product, and to engage and inspire internally and externally facing parties.

Detail-oriented and driven to seek and understand rapidly evolving and emerging technology trends with a view to predicting and informing product innovation and go-to-market strategies.

An empathic leader and mentor of both junior staff and early venture technology entrepreneurs.

Published author and keynote speaker.

School of Humanity Mentor (Volunteer) 10/2024– 04/2025

Mentoring a cohort of students at an award-winning, international online high school in the ethical use of emerging technologies.

Metanomic LTD Chief Executive Officer (Perm) 10/2021– 06/2023

Secured $3M in funding to pioneer a new video game SaaS platform, leveraging machine learning for advanced user and game economy analytics.

FutureOn AS VP Global Marketing (Perm) 10/2020 – 10/2021

Established the marketing strategy and department from the ground up at a Norwegian SaaS firm specialising in 3D visualisation for the energy industry.

Decos NL Head of Global Product Marketing (Contract) 05/2020 – 09/2020

Revitalised go-to-market strategies for Decos, a Dutch software development company.

WFS Technologies Chief Marketing Officer (Perm) 04/2019 – 03/2020

Championed strategic growth and lead generation at an Industrial IoT solutions provider, targeting the energy sector.

RawShark Studios Creative Director (Perm) 08/2017 – 04/2019

Creative direction for a bootstrapped games studio to deliver a prototype (vertical slice) on time and on budget to meet investment criteria.

SAP Vice President, Product Management (Contract) 03/2017 – 08/2017

Reporting directly to the Chief Product Officer and part of the Senior Leadership Team. Tasked with evangelising the SAP Cloud suite, producing creative content and assets, and engaging with SAP senior leadership, CxO-level clients, end users and product owners to collate feedback for product development roadmap.

Cronycle Interim CEO 09/2016 – 03/2017 (Contract)

Tasked with turning around and growing a struggling content curation startup which had operated for over 4 years with no commercial clients. Achieved turnaround results in 6 months.

Cisco Programme Director 01/2015 – 02/2016 (Contract)

Responsible via an outsource partner to provide programme assurance for a large Pega implementation involving multiple offshore third parties.

Software AG VP Chief Evangelist (Permanent) 07/2013 – 08/2014

Hired by the COO directly as Chief Evangelist and made globally responsible for creating story-driven narratives for their suite of products.