The necessity of building and maintaining a strong network is a familiar construct among numerous industries, and is certainly one that is not lost in the gaming community.
However, among the multitude of strategies and expert tutorials on how best to achieve such a goal, is the question of: how much do you know about your network? With this in mind, CasinoBeats is aiming to take a look under the hood, if you will, and has tasked the 100 Club to help out.
In the maiden multimedia outing of our pathways insights, Shelley White, CEO of the Responsible Gambling Council, takes to the hot seat to offer insight into a journey that led to the industry, as well examining ongoing challenges, opportunities that lie ahead, and the importance of collaborative leadership.
“Actually my experience outside of gambling have been a bit longer than my experiences have been in gambling; this month is actually my fifth year with the responsible gambling council,” White begins when looking back at past experience outside of gambling.
“And prior to that I had leadership roles in the nonprofit sector, the global nonprofit sector, with the YMCA, the United Way and the Kidney Foundation of Canada.
“And in those organisation my role involved taking social issues and creating and bringing people together, multi-sectoral partners from the public, private, nonprofit sectors, to create systems changes, and to develop policies and programs to address root causes of issues.”
“You can’t take a cookie cutter approach to developing regulation or standards”
With the aforementioned milestone moment recently passed, it is added that initial entry into the “nimble, innovative purpose driven” RGC came via a friend.
Furthermore, it is added that the impact responsible gambling has in the industry, as well as a company based in Canada but working on a global scale, proved to offer much intrigue.
During the discussion a multitude of avenues are ventured down with development in Canada, AI, machine learning, and data analytics, and the importance of cultural sensitivity in developing tailored responsible gambling strategies and programs, all evidenced. “The only thing that’s constant is the pace of change,” White remarks.
However, looking at evidenced based foundations, as well as the necessity of collaboration, it as noted: “That’s the value of working with partners and the value of understanding the values of behaviours of people who live in various parts of the world, you realise that you can’t take a cookie cutter approach to developing regulation or standards in order for responsible gambling regulations, programs, and services to be effective.”
Before touching upon the importance of strong, courageous and collaborative leadership, and the necessity of embracing all of those qualities
“I think that right now, at this point, it’s absolutely essential,” White explained. “These are complex, we’ve solved all of the easys problems, the opportunities and challenges that we’re facing, given the technology that’s available, the complexity in terms of demographics, the differences that exist in the different kinds of gambling channels, makes this much more complex.
“So, what is essential now in terms of tackling these complex opportunities and challenges is a collaborative approach, bringing together collectively our knowledge, our skills, our resources, our perspectives, and having holistic debates and discussion and brining together our resources to identify the key questions that we want to address and identity the best solutions going forward. So, collaboration, this 360 degree approach, is essential.”
If you would like to tell your story, or be considered for the CasinoBeats 100 Club, please email us at [email protected].
Launched to give a voice to the industry on a range of key issues, the CasinoBeats 100 Club tackles the tricky questions and shares members’ views across the CasinoBeats network. Have your say by joining the 100 Club.
