Playtika Appoints Two New Members in Leadership Team

The positions were filled by Gili Brudno and Darlan Monterisi respectively. They both have more than 20 years of experience in their fields and are part of Playtika’s ambitious plans moving forward. The hires follow a relatively tumultuous period for the company.

New Hires Bring Lots of Experience

Gili Brudno’s CHRO position comes with responsibilities for building the Israeli-based mobile gaming company’s global talent strategy and advancing the employee experience. Her previous positions include positions as a senior HR executive at Teva Pharmaceuticals, SAP, BioCatch, and other large-scale organizations or startups.

Gili and Darlan bring tremendous experience and perspective to Playtika. The strengths of these exceptional leaders will advance Playtika among our diverse set of stakeholders, helping propel us in realizing our ambitious vision.

Shlomi Aizenberg, COO, Playtika

Darlan Monterisi is taking the position of a global head of communications and is also a new executive vice president. She has an accomplished career in the field with years of experience in creating and leading communications programs. This is why Playtika hired her to lead the company’s public affairs, including reputation management, and brand management.

Additionally, Monterisi will be partnering with fellow executives, serving as a trusted strategic advisor on all aspects of the business. Her latest position was with artificial intelligence (AI) company Dataminr, but her previous positions include leading communications programs for Rockstar Games and CA Technologies. She was also a public affairs officer with the US Marine Corps.

Breathing Fresh Life into the Company

Although the new leadership hires are a great addition to the company, and it’s most certainly good news for the company, the Israeli-based developer hasn’t been enjoying easy times lately. At the beginning of the month, Playtika announced it would stop developing new games, halting launches in the near future.

This, coupled with the mixed results in its 4Q22 and annual 2022 financials did not compound together to form a great outlook. Although revenue for 2022 increased by 1.3% year-over-year (YoY) from $2.58 billion in 2021 to $2.62 billion in 2022, net income was down from $308.5 million in 2021 to $275.3 million in 2022. Free cashflow was also slightly down when comparing the two full periods.

Furthermore, towards the middle of December 2022, Playtika was already experiencing its second wave of layoffs. Back then, it was preparing to let go around 10-15% of its workforce, with the June wave seeing only around 6% or about 250 of its staff being laid off. While all these four stories were interrupted by some positive developments, some were seeing this as a bad sign.

Clearly, the company is still very successful, and hiring new executives should breathe fresh ideas into the company. Additionally, bringing new expertise will most likely help with optimizing resources and hopefully propel the company forward to its “ambitious vision,” as Aizenberg put it in the press release announcing the new hires.