“Whatever women do, they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.”

– Charlotte Whitton

Her favorite artist is Caravaggio, a man of complexity and depth and a legendary bad boy who was more interested in exploring the worlds outside the boundaries of art than working within the confines of the ancien régime.

She has traveled the world to see his paintings, and when she travels in her business life, there is a bit of research undertaken to see if she just might be in the neighborhood of a Caravaggio so she can sneak a peek. She brags that she was able to recently view a canvas of his from a private collection in Ragusa, Sicily.

Ewa Bakun speaks a number of languages, including her native tongue, Polish. She also speaks Italian, English, Spanish, and French fluently. Her education includes advanced degrees from Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, as well as the Polish Academy of Science and Warsaw University, both in Warsaw, Poland. And beyond languages, she is well-trained in  research methodology.

Her personal intellectual capital has allowed her to explore gaming across the globe – and one should never underestimate the power of being able to explore and study other jurisdictions by being fluent in the native language of that jurisdiction. Without the alignment of language, one is often looking into a snow globe.

Her language fluency and extensive travel have made her one of the most recognized influencers in gaming on the planet — and with good reason. Bakun joined Clarion Gaming in London in 2009 and became the company’s Director of Insight and Engagement in 2018. With Clarion, a few of her notable achievements are:

• Being involved in U.S. marketing for both GiGse and Sports Betting USA.
• Having worked to launch the award-winning Consumer Protection Zone at ICE London in 2018, an environment to explore the latest developments in delivering safer gaming.
• Being involved in the event launch for Brazil in 2014, bringing the industry together to shape the legislation and regulation for sustainable gaming in that country.
• Starting in 2015, being on the leading edge in pushing for diversity, equity, and inclusion in the gaming space.
• Working to launch Ampersand, an invite-only global community of engaged gaming professionals to explore the goals of innovation and sustainability through open and honest discourse.

There is more to it than that, however.

Gaming executive Luisa Woods, no lightweight in experience and understanding of the global gaming scene herself, has identified a number of areas where Bakun stands out from the crowd. Luisa suggests that Bakun facilitates unexpected connections. I have found this to be an excellent insight.

Championing inclusivity, breaking barriers

The people who lead the gaming industry today will not be leading the industry tomorrow, for if they are, the industry will have stagnated. Bakun understands this completely and does not rush about working to stroke current industry leadership. Rather, she looks to find future industry leadership. Bakun is not happy to develop a conference with the same old faces; instead, she aggressively works to find new faces, and she does this extraordinarily well.

Susan Hensel, global regulatory veteran and today a respected gaming attorney and consultant, succinctly captures this attribute of Bakun by suggesting that she is more interested in giving the new and innovative personalities in the industry a voice rather than simply providing the established leadership with yet another microphone.

This is Bakun as pure Caravaggio, with little interest in being the ancien régime, but opening up new boundaries and visions for the future with her work.

Woods points out that Bakun is inclusive in an industry that is generally working to create barriers to entry. Bakun starts with the existing ecosystem and then looks well beyond it. Not only is she fluent in many languages, but she is also fluent in many industries.

Bakun does not see brick & mortar, commercial, tribal, esports, iPoker, or internet sports betting and the like as separate worlds but as all part of a larger connected reality. Like Caravaggio, Bakun paints on a large canvas.

Woods also notes that Bakun fosters a safe place for the exploration of best practices. By using an open format approach, Bakun creates environments where all participants are created equal, where seating and leadership do not tip the scales to any one person or group, and where titles are a person’s first name. Bakun uses this same approach with Ampersand, in which she helped to create a classroom of equals and not a lecture hall for industry leadership to talk down to people.

A strong ethical roadmap

Caravaggio was always known to associate with a very variegated sampling of humanity, from the highest of the religious orders to the most common of people. In fact, many of the models for women in his religious paintings were prostitutes, which caused great consternation within the church in Rome.

Bakun emulates this style in that she is comfortable with all levels of society and does not bow down to the established order. She judges the person and not the person’s status.

Hensel tells the story of being invited to speak at the 2015 GiGse Lunch in London. Hensel, the first female president of the International Association of Gaming Regulators, informed Bakun that she wanted to turn the lunch into a game show revolving around online gaming topics, with the assistance of the chairman of the State of New Jersey’s Division of Gaming Enforcement, Dave Rebuck, well-known tribal personality Victor Rocha, and myself.

Whereas most would scuttle such a thought, Bakun greenlit the show. Not only was it instructive, but it was great fun. Sometimes, we can learn by laughing at ourselves, and Bakun cares more about the lesson than the delivery and embraces novel teaching environments, in the same way that Caravaggio was known to be unpredictable as his art developed. Their common element is a willingness to take chances and to push boundaries.

To suggest that Bakun is generally ahead of the curve in the gaming space is an understatement. By 2016, something that was becoming evident about the ICE London show was that some people were losing patience with an industry that talked about the importance of women yet often seemed to value them as provocatively dressed props to sell gaming products and services to a predominately male crowd at trade shows.

The situation became quite heated in 2018 when the head of the UK Gambling Commission, Sarah Harrison, threatened to boycott the conference, complaining that the women staffing the booths “…were expected to wear nothing more than swimsuits.” This debate was joined with additional strong criticisms by several members of the UK Parliament, who were taken aback by women staffing some of the booths whose job was apparently just to stand there.

In the middle of all of this was, of course, Bakun. I had run across her while she was on something of a mission on the expo floor at ICE London 2018, and she had her sights on a booth occupied by two Eastern European gaming operators who were accompanied by two “booth hostesses.” The women were not dressed in a way that would suggest that the gentlemen were thinking about taking them home to meet mom.

I watched Bakun and another woman have a short discussion with the two gentlemen. As it became tense, I moved on. Checking back the next day, I noted the booth was closed.

Caravaggio’s work is noted for its exaggerated use of dark and light. It is not a place to find gray areas. Again, this is much like Bakun. It would be terribly inconsistent for her to accept classes upstairs talking about diversity and inclusion, where at the other end of the escalator was an expo floor that reeked of sexism. This is a woman who possesses a strong ethical roadmap – and she uses it well in her life. It stands out clearly, which is the whole point of Caravaggio’s use of white.

I entered the gaming business in 1971, dealing cards at night while in college. For the most part, I have been around it ever since. It was never clear to me exactly what I was looking for, but one of the true gifts I found along the way was Ewa Bakun, an amazing innovator, thinker, leader, and mentor.

Best of all, she is my friend, and it is always nice to be able to learn from a brilliant artist.

Photo:  Picturenow/Universal Images Group via Getty Images