Becca Roundtree

I figured out at a very early stage what I wanted to be involved with. I've always wanted to be in this industry, always wanted to be involved with organized play because I like rules and I like collectibles. I focused on that from running the organized play programs at the ground level with retailers and community organizers, to improving visibility. I went out of my way to make introductions and create connections with people at the corporate level, and then I kept up with them. Basically, I never stopped. I'm always trying to be involved with everything new that happens, always trying to be the most knowledgeable in my area, so that I can't really be ignored.

Don't let good be the enemy of great. This is a quote I got from my boss, and it really resonates with me, particularly in an environment where we're managed by a Japanese company with a lot of exacting corporate culture. It basically means that if you've got something that's good and the community would appreciate it and it would have great value in the state that it is now, don't delay putting it out there as a beta or as a practice to gather feedback until it's absolutely perfect. Because you'll inevitably find at that point that you need to go back to the drawing board as well, and that what you thought was perfect wasn't perfect for the community. That quote always sticks with me.

Don't be ignored. Place yourself at the forefront. This industry is quite difficult to get noticed in if you're not a part of it already. For Pokemon specifically, I would say take every opportunity that you can to enjoy your relationship with the brand in a social community space where people are there that you can network with. When you make those connections with people on site, you're already in an environment that you find exciting and that you want to be in, so they can see it on your face that you're someone who belongs there. I decided from my involvement with organized play, when I was a player and a tournament judge myself, that that's where I wanted to be. I knew it was a very niche part of the industry, but in the area that I was already engaging with, that niche part of the industry was really wide open to me because everyone was in that space. Take advantage of it, and don't be afraid to show your passion.

Because our program is so niche, visibility is the biggest challenge. Obviously the Pokemon brand is global and worldwide, everyone knows the cartoons, the trading cards, the plush. But the tournament series, and even more narrow than that, the organizers and judges who run that tournament series, has much narrower visibility both outside of the company and inside. Every time we work with a new department or we get a new representative, either with an external vendor or when we start working on a new initiative in the company, we are educating this person all about what the program is and what we're trying to achieve all over again because there's so little visibility. We've had to be very good at summarizing and advocating for the program, particularly because we create a lot of high-profile, high-visibility destination events for professors that some people in the company are very surprised are actually going on. I'd say that's the biggest challenge, keeping everyone that we're involved with knowledgeable of the program and being able to justify everything that we want to achieve.

Number one is integrity. That sounds really buzzword-y, but it's actually one of the core values of the program that we put out there to our volunteers as well. When it comes to advocating for the program, people can sometimes say that in order to get this out faster or to prioritize something, we need to make some compromises. It's being able to balance between what is at a stage that we'd be happy to have out there to the public versus what the departments we work with think is the MVP from their perspective. I'm able to advocate but not compromise to a level that would affect the user experience or affect the philosophy of what we're trying to put out there. I know what we're trying to achieve in our program, I know the standard and quality that we're trying to have our volunteers affect on the Play Pokemon programs. Although I'm willing to be flexible about how we execute it, I'm not really going to compromise on the level or the integrity of the program. That really comes out of passion as well, because the program I fell in love with is the program that I want to strengthen. It was effective for me and for other people, and I'm not willing to do anything that makes it less than.