This is a tribute to the much-loved and always-remembered, Tanya Laird. Tanya was born on August 16, 1978, and passed away on March 31, 2023, at St. Joseph’s Hospice in London. She was born in Hong Kong and raised in various British army bases before settling in England. 

Tanya was incredibly passionate about creative technologies, arts, and most importantly, bringing people together. She studied Media and Communications at Colchester Institute before starting her career in marketing. She made the move into the games industry as a product manager and quickly learned the development processes, terminology, attitudes and methodologies to interpret between development and commercial teams. Major career highlights included working at Jagex and Disney.

That knowledge led her to found her own company, Digital Jam Ltd.  A digital and gaming consultancy which facilitated conversations between different industries with a focus on the application of existing technologies to new sectors, or new technology to existing sectors. The company spawned the critically acclaimed, long-running podcast Digital Jam Sessions and the Digital Jam Lectures.

As a multi-award winner, Tanya was at the forefront of emerging creative technology spanning games, film, TV, comics, music, immersive theatre, transmedia VR, AR and AI. Throughout her career, she also sat as the Vice Chair of BAME in Games, was co-Chair of the Immerse UK sub-group for content, and was a board advisor to the British Games Institute. She was also the creator of the VR Writers Room and the co-organiser for the VR/AR/XR focussed group “Augmenting Reality Meetups”, one of the longest-running tech meetups in London. 

Tanya was inducted into the Women in Games Hall of Fame and was the first Immersive Technology Ambassador for ESL UK, with other accolades and industry achievements including Diversity Champion at the Scottish Gaming Awards (2022), Top 100 Asians in Tech (2018, 2019 and 2022) and the Asian Women of Achievement Awards 2017, amongst many others.

Upon being diagnosed with cancer in May 2018, Tanya also started her own Facebook community group “How I Live Now”, sharing her personal journey and regular, popular ‘chemo fashion’ updates with a global network of other people affected by or living with cancer.

She is survived by her family, including her twin sister Kim and daughter Jade. 

https://tanya-laird.muchloved.com/fundraising