Tech entrepreneur Sarah Bond recently made history with her latest promotion to Xbox president.
First reported by The Verge, it was announced that Bond would become the newest president as part of various leadership changes in the company. With her latest promotion, Bond has become the first Black woman to serve in the role at Xbox and the first Black woman to serve as President at any other major gaming company, according to Black Girl Gamers. As part of her newest position, Bond will be supervising the entire Xbox company as well as their hardware and software initiatives. She will be involved in leading the brand as they work on newer and future projects such as a “redesigned disc-less Xbox Series X” as well as a new hybrid console.
Previously, Bond was the corporate vice president at Microsoft. In that position, she has overseen Xbox Game Pass, an initiative that gives customers immediate access to newly released video games. Under her tenure, she’s helped release high-profile video games such as “Halo Infinite.”
Bond has also been an advocate for increased representation at Microsoft, helping found a resource group for Black employees at the gaming company. For her work at the company, she was named as one of Variety’s Top 500 Entertainment Business Leaders.
“To manage the platform of today, and build the platform of tomorrow, we are bringing together the teams that will make this possible,” said CEO Phil Spencer in a memo reported by The Verge. “Sarah Bond will lead this team as President of Xbox — bringing together Devices, Player & Creator Experiences, Platform Engineering, Strategy, Business Planning, Data & Analytics and Business Development.”
Although improvements have been made, increasing representation is still something the gaming industry needs to improve. Per the International Game Developers Association, only 34% of game developers are women.
Xbox. It’s an honor. Always. ????
— BondSarahBond (@BondSarah_Bond) October 26, 2023
The rate of Black game developers is even lower as they compose only five percent of all employees in an industry currently composed of 428,000 jobs. Although representation is still low, the percentage is an increase from the two percent reported by previous reports in earlier years.
As a result of the lack of off-screen, there’s also a lack of representation on-screen in video games. Only a limited number of video games made by major developments feature Black representation with independently made video games creating the majority of Black characters in video games.
Nonprofits dedicated to supporting Black professionals in the gaming industry include The Black in Gaming Foundation, Black Girl Gamers and Cxmmunity.
