Most Influential Women 2026 winners: Part 3
A recurring theme among this year’s Most Influential Women winners was the importance of moving beyond female representation in gaming and ensuring women have a meaningful voice in decision-making and leadership.
While the campaign celebrates those breaking barriers and advancing female representation across the sector, the volume of nominations also highlights the breadth of talent and the significant contributions women are making throughout the industry.
We’d like to extend our sincere thanks to the judging panel who helped shape this year’s iGB Most Influential Women 2026 list. Find out more about the annual campaign and meet our esteemed judges here.
Here are the final three winners of iGB’s Most Influential Women 2026.
Suzanne Trout
Executive VP and CMO, Cordish Gaming Group
Suzanne Trout, executive vice‑president and chief marketing officer of Cordish Gaming Group, has spent her entire career in the gaming business and says she has been fortunate to come in “at the dawn of expansion”.
Her trajectory, moving between Las Vegas and Atlantic City destinations, small commercial and tribal casinos, large publicly traded companies and private operators, has shaped a flexible, hands‑on approach to a sector she calls “ever‑changing and evolving”.
Trout describes the recognition of being named as one of iGB’s Most Influential Women 2026 as “an honour” and a welcome moment of visibility.
“I love the gaming industry,” she tells iGB. “I’ve spent my whole life in it. Looking at the women who have been nominated in the past, I think it’s really meaningful. And I feel very fortunate to be in this group of talented women.”
Her career highlights are less about a single dramatic break than about riding waves of industry growth and adapting to new formats.
“It taught me to really be flexible and to really learn new things,” she explains, recalling work across a wide range of properties and company types.
That breadth of experience now informs her outlook on the future.
Although she jokes that retirement might be what others expect next, she is energised by Cordish’s expansion plans across gaming and entertainment and by the rapid development of marketing technologies.
“We’re keeping up with tech on the marketing side,” she continues. “AI makes every day feel a little bit like a new day.”
Rather than seeing AI as a replacement for people, she argues it should “refine the customer experience” through increasingly personalised offers and interactions, a priority for operators seeking to differentiate in crowded local and regional markets.
Visibility, mentorship and a slow‑moving leadership layer
For Trout, the value of industry awards and lists lies largely in visibility.
“There’s not a lot of opportunities for particularly women and minorities for visibility in this business,” she says. “Acknowledgement and showing other women that there’s a path to whatever your career goals are, it does matter.”
Yet Trout is blunt about progress on diversity and inclusion across the sector.
“No. That’s a hard no. Not at all,” she responds when asked whether gaming has reached where it needs to be on DEI.
She acknowledges that there are more women in management roles but emphasises the persistent lack of female representation in boardrooms and top leadership. “It’s still a fairly lonely place to be,” she adds, noting that leadership composition looks, in many ways, much as it did three decades ago.
Her view is not only ethical but also commercial.
A broader mix of leaders, she argues, would bring diversity of thinking and help accelerate product evolution.
“I think we’d be a better industry,” she says. “We’d benefit from different points of view. Our evolution’s been quite slow.”
Cordish’s approach to DEI
Trout joined Cordish in part because of the company’s deliberate approach to diversity.
She describes a multi‑pronged effort that combines internal training with targeted recruitment and mentorship programmes.
Cordish runs a management development programme aimed at recent graduates in which diversity is an explicit priority and offers development tracks for existing team members intended to broaden advancement opportunities.
The company also maintains a dedicated team focused on diversity, training and day‑to‑day integration of DEI principles.
Trout is also active with industry groups such as Global Gaming Women and says Cordish supports external educational opportunities for women in the business.
“We really try to take the time to work with folks coming into our business,” she notes.
Advice for the next generation
Trout’s advice to women aiming for industry recognition is practical and relational.
Rather than chase recognition, she encourages people to focus on meaningful goals and on helping others.
“The most precious gift I think we can give anybody is our time,” she says, acknowledging the competing demands many women face. “Taking that time, giving people the gift of time is really something. That does pay dividends.”
She urges senior figures to provide honest feedback, to mentor junior colleagues and to share experience generously, actions she sees as effective ways to build leadership capacity across the industry.
“Aim for sharing yourself and your experience with others in the industry,” she says. “It’s a great way to help lead people and buoy them up in their career.”
As Cordish looks to expand its entertainment and gaming footprint, Trout’s emphasis on tech‑enabled personalisation, persistent advocacy for diversity and hands‑on mentoring signal the priorities she will bring to the company’s next phase.
For an industry that continues to wrestle with boardroom composition and customer engagement, her mix of operational experience and focus on people development offers a pragmatic template for change.
Zoe Ebling
VP of Interactive, AGS
Zoe Ebling, VP of Interactive at AGS, has been named one of iGB’s Most Influential Women for 2026, an accolade she greets with a mix of gratitude and perspective.
“Honestly, it’s my second award this year, and I feel a bit like Kendrick Lamar at the Grammys, taking home a lot of trophies and wondering where everyone else is,” she tells iGB. “There are so many talented women in this industry doing incredible work who never get named. Many of them are the reason I’m successful.”
Ebling’s path to influence has been shaped less by single-star moments than by high-pressure, team-driven milestones. She points to her first regulated US launch in New Jersey timed to go live ahead of Thanksgiving, as a defining moment.
“We launched our first two games in any regulated US market on Thanksgiving Day, thanks to Lauren Gaskill, the partner who tested over the holiday,” she recalls. “What made it matter wasn’t the date. It was that everyone involved believed the launch was worth the effort.
“Anyone who has worked through a high-pressure moment like that knows how it bonds you with the people next to you. The work I’m proudest of came from teams who cared about the outcome, and the trust built in those moments is what got me here.”
Career arc and leadership style
Ebling’s rise within AGS, a supplier of casino gaming content, reflects a pragmatic, systems-oriented approach to leadership.
She describes herself as a “systems thinker” who designs initiatives to be repeatable, explaining: “When I create something new, I build it as a template or framework that others can run, so it can be repeated and improved.”
That emphasis on scalability speaks to a common challenge in the sector, turning one-off projects into institutional capabilities that survive turnover and growth.
Her ambitions are explicitly executive.
“I’ve always wanted to lead companies and make a meaningful impact,” she continues. “That’s where you can change the most, for the business and for the people in it.”
At the same time, she stresses balance.
“I also keep personal goals on the list, because I’m better at the job when work isn’t my only interest,” she notes.
Visibility and recognition
Ebling welcomes awards and lists for the visibility they provide, but she questions the limited scope of many such initiatives.
“Recognition opens doors, and a list like this puts names in front of people who might never have come across them,” she says. “I’d love to see a list of 100 women changing this industry, not just 10. A list of 10 quietly suggests there are only 10, and there are so many more doing the work without getting the credit.”
On diversity, inclusion and allies, Ebling does not paint the sector as having arrived at parity.
“Not yet,” she says when asked whether gaming has reached an adequate state on diversity and inclusion.
She notes that public attention, particularly in the US, can be fleeting and that the real test is who is consistently present in decision-making rooms. “There are rooms I walk into where there are still more men than women at the table.”
She also highlights the role of male allies in advancing change. “What gives me hope, is the men who do the hard things in support of women, men like Rob Ziems and the other allies who have been in the corner along the way, shout out to Adam Whitehurst, who is also the only reason I can now understand sports analogies. Real progress is who’s sitting at the table, and who’s pulling up a chair for someone else.”
Practical DEI within AGS
At AGS, Ebling says inclusion is embedded through structured programmes rather than left to chance. The company runs an emerging leader programme, led by Sherrill Lazarus, designed to provide formal mentorship and development so advancement doesn’t depend on informal networks.
“Support only works when it’s built in rather than left to chance,” she argues. “We encourage people to act like Tom Brady, who had six coaches. Even those labelled the best in the world have people coaching them, so we put a lot into coaching, development and internal mentorship to help our aspiring leaders grow.”
Managing a global team also gives her daily exposure to diverse viewpoints.
“I lead a global team with people in countries all over the world, which means different perspectives are part of how we work every day,” she says.
Advice for aspiring nominees
For professionals aiming to be visible in future Most Influential Women-style lists, Ebling’s advice is straightforward and practical: get comfortable promoting yourself and others and be disciplined about delivery.
“Good work doesn’t always speak for itself, and exposure matters,” Ebling highlights. “Promoting others is the part people skip, and it’s how more names end up on lists like this one. Then work smarter and do what you say you’re going to do. That’s my biggest one, especially on the small things, because that’s the bit most people miss.”
Katie Kohler
Senior iGaming Communications Lead, BetMGM
Katie Kohler, senior iGaming communications lead at BetMGM, says the iGB Most Influential Women accolade is “an honour and humbling”, but she is quick to frame the recognition as the product of a collective effort.
“I believe no one gets to where they’re going alone,” she tells iGB, naming family and colleagues as central to her career. “I would not be here without them.”
Building resilience through personal adversity
Kohler’s route to one of the most visible communications roles in North American regulated gambling was neither linear nor without hardship.
Kohler’s childhood ambition, she says, was to be a reporter for the Philadelphia Daily News, a dream signalled by the framed paper on her office wall and a formative fifth‑grade project.
“I started my own newspaper in my bedroom and sold it to my parents for a nickel.”
That early appetite for storytelling led her into local news and freelance journalism, where she learned “the craft of journalism” and cultivated the persistence that would mark her later work.
A major personal health crisis in college forced Kohler out of the conventional career track and prompted a reassessment of priorities.
“When you wake up in the ICU and you’re unemployed and you see who’s next to you that morning, it really helps you realise what you value,” she states.
The experience, she adds, established “a sense of resilience” that reshaped her ambitions and accelerated her commitment to find a workplace that valued her.
Finding her voice in North American iGaming
That resilience fed into a rapid immersion in the then‑nascent US sports betting and iGaming landscape.
Kohler joined Catena Media to run the Pennsylvania site as the state opened to regulated sports betting and iGaming, turning a provincial beat into a platform for scoops and relationships.
“Being at the frontier of this new wave of legalisation, I just took it and ran with it,” she recalls.
In October 2022 Kohler moved to BetMGM, recruited by then‑director of PR Elisa Richardson. The position gave her scope to shape iGaming communications for a major regulated operator in North America.
“iGaming is new in North America,” she explains. “There’s no textbook on how to do iGaming communications in North America.
“Make it your own”, she says Richardson told her, advice Kohler embraced while navigating legal and compliance guardrails.
At BetMGM she has worked on high‑profile partnerships and products that have helped elevate the company’s iGaming profile.
“The BetMGM brand has been the privilege of my life so far,” she says, acknowledging that the pace of the industry often leaves little time to savour milestones.
Visibility of role models key to DEI push
Representation matters to Kohler.
On hearing she had been selected for iGB’s Most Influential Women list, she reflects on how rare visible female leadership has been in sports and gaming.
“If you can’t see other female leaders, it’s hard to envision yourself as that,” she says. “If 22‑year‑old Katie could have seen that, how different my mentality would have been.”
She also insists that institutional intent matters. Kohler points to the importance of senior male allies who put women into positions of responsibility, such as BetMGM CEO Adam Greenblatt and CRO Matt Prevost.
She credits BetMGM’s leadership structure with creating pathways for female talent.
“It starts at the top,” she says, noting that the company’s communications team is female‑led and that around half of the company’s C‑suite is female, a model she believes other operators can emulate.
Looking ahead, Kohler frames her objectives in service of the business rather than personal advancement. With iGaming accounting for roughly two‑thirds of BetMGM’s revenue, her priorities remain “to continue to tell the iGaming story for BetMGM” and to protect and amplify the brand as it expands into new markets such as Alberta.
“Public relations is a mix of offence and defence,” she says. “It is telling those stories, but it is also protecting the BetMGM brand and amplifying our leaders and the voices we have here.”
For peers in communications and the wider gambling ecosystem, Kohler emphasises a leadership style rooted in relationships and empathy.
“People will forget what you did and what you said, but they won’t forget how you made them feel,” she says.