Kelly Vero
Most boards understand that AI, 3D content and immersive platforms will reshape how brands meet customers. Few have any operational picture of what that actually looks like inside their business. The gap between strategy decks about the metaverse and a working AI commerce stack is where most digital ambition stalls.
Kelly Vero is a 30-year game developer turned founder who helps brands and boards turn AI, 3D content and immersive platforms into working commercial infrastructure, drawing on her work as CEO of digital fashion start-up NAK3D.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Kelly Vero
- She has shipped AAA games (including credits across the Lara Croft and Transformers franchises) and now runs an AI-powered digital fashion business, so she speaks about immersive technology from the inside of two different commercial stacks, not from a consultancy slide.
- As CEO and CTO of NAK3D, she gives leadership teams a concrete view of how 3D content, AI and consumer brands are starting to fit together at production scale.
- Her book How Video Games Made the Metaverse: From Pixels to Portals (Routledge) gives executives a structured way to read the metaverse as the natural extension of forty years of game technology, not a marketing fad.
- She has worked at policy and institutional level with the European Commission and Pro Helvetia, which means she can frame technology questions in terms a regulated board will recognise.
Biography highlights
- CEO and CTO of NAK3D, a Swiss AI-powered digital fashion start-up.
- Chief Metaverse Officer at Aequaland, an educational platform for children.
- Author of How Video Games Made the Metaverse: From Pixels to Portals, published by Routledge.
- Earlier edition nominated for the British Business Book Awards 2024.
- 30-year career in interactive entertainment, with credits across the Lara Croft and Transformers franchises.
- Consultant to the European Commission, Pro Helvetia (Swiss Arts Council) and Confetti Media Group.
- Won a Startup Innovation Award at a World Economic Forum-linked event in Davos, January 2024.
Biography
The metaverse arrived in the boardroom as a slogan and left as a question: where is the operational substance behind any of this. The honest answer is that it sits inside the games industry, where 3D worlds, real-time content pipelines and live-service economies have been working at scale for two decades.
That is the world Kelly Vero has spent thirty years inside. Her credits stretch across the Lara Croft franchise and Hasbro’s Transformers games, taking her from script and character work into production at the heart of mass-market AAA development. The result is a deep, practitioner-level grasp of how immersive technology actually gets built, shipped and monetised.
She now applies that experience as CEO and CTO of NAK3D, a Swiss AI-powered digital fashion company sitting between gaming, virtual platforms and consumer brands. NAK3D won a Startup Innovation Award at a World Economic Forum-linked event in Davos in January 2024. Vero is also Chief Metaverse Officer of the children’s education platform Aequaland, and has consulted for the European Commission and Pro Helvetia on technology and creative policy.
Her book How Video Games Made the Metaverse: From Pixels to Portals, published by Routledge, treats the metaverse as the next chapter of a long technical lineage, not a sudden hype cycle. For boards trying to decide what to fund, what to ignore and what to build, that frame is more useful than any forecast.
Key speaking topics
- AI and 3D commerce
- The metaverse as commercial infrastructure
- Digital fashion and virtual goods
- Generative AI in creative production
- Game design as a model for customer experience
- Web3 and immersive platforms
- Innovation strategy in deep tech
Ideal for
- CMOs and brand leaders deciding how to commit to virtual goods, digital fashion and immersive customer experience
- CEOs and boards of consumer and entertainment businesses weighing AI and 3D investment
- CTOs and digital transformation leads scoping AI commerce, content pipelines and creative AI
- Investors and innovation teams in retail, fashion, media, gaming and adjacent sectors
Audience outcomes
- A clear read on which immersive and metaverse claims are commercially serious and which are not
- Concrete examples of how AI and 3D content are already reshaping fashion, retail and entertainment commerce
- A working frame for treating game technology as the parent discipline of the metaverse, with practical implications for product and platform decisions
- Confidence to scope a first credible AI or 3D content initiative, rather than commission another exploratory study
Talks
A practitioner view of how creator economies in games map onto the next generation of commercial platforms.
Key takeaways:
- How free-to-play economics translate to brand and retail platforms
- What creator-led platforms imply for marketing and product budgets
- Which capabilities a non-gaming business needs to participate
A focused look at how regulated, high-stakes consumer industries are testing immersive and Web3 models.
Key takeaways:
- Why gambling and entertainment are early signals for wider Web3 commerce
- The regulatory questions boards should be asking now
- What works, what has failed, and why
How immersive social platforms are reshaping the way customers, employees and communities interact.
Key takeaways:
- The shift from screens to spaces in consumer behaviour
- Implications for workplace design and collaboration
- Where serious investment is going inside large enterprises
How the disciplines of game design translate into customer engagement, behaviour change and product strategy.
Key takeaways:
- Engagement mechanics that travel beyond entertainment
- How to read your customer experience as a designed system
- Pitfalls when non-gaming teams import gamification badly
Drawing on her work with Aequaland, a view of how immersive technology is changing how children learn and how that signal matters to other consumer-facing industries.
Key takeaways:
- What “phygital” actually means in product terms
- How education is becoming an early proving ground for immersive commerce
- Lessons that transfer to retail, brand and media