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A global ambassador for W&M Esports
Jordan Whitaker MPP ’14, director of Esports at 91心頭利, might have to add “ambassador-at-large” to his job description.
From January 14-19, Whitaker and Apex Legends team members Colten Adkins '28 and Ryan Dougan '27 traveled to Sapporo, Japan for the Apex Legends Global Series Year 5 Championship. Hosted at the Daiwa House PREMIST DOME (Sapporo Dome), the event drew over 38,000 fans and was officially supported by the City of Sapporo and organized by Electronic Arts (EA).
Although Jordan has an established international network, the idea for the trip to Japan came not from him, but from Adkins and Dougan. “I received a pitch deck from them, and they said, ‘This would transform our lives. It's got all the best people in our space, all the best coaches, all the best production value, all the best players. We would love to go. Can we do it?’ And I looked at their deck, and I thought, Holy smokes! I know the person organizing the entire event. We can do something there.”
He contacted the organizer, Monica Dinsmore at EA, and her team arranged a personal, behind-the-scenes, all-access tour – from the Player Lounge to the broadcast and production area, the casting desk and stage. “What an opportunity for students to see the actual industry workings! It was wonderful.”
Whitaker is following up that successful trip with an academic conference this spring. He will lead a panel at the Academic Esports Seminar (AES) at the University of Agder (UiA) in Kristiansand, Norway, in May.
The seminar will bring together researchers, educators, industry professionals, and policymakers to explore the evolving role of esports within education, culture, and society. Whitaker’s panel is entitled “Playing Across Borders: Esports, Multiculturalism, and Diplomacy,” and will explore how esports functions as a global cultural space that connects players, communities, and institutions across national and cultural boundaries.
In the invitation he received to participate, the organizers noted that Whitaker’s expertise and experience will provide “an important perspective on how esports can contribute to cross-cultural dialogue, digital communities, and emerging forms of international cooperation.”
Although Whitaker only started in his position last year, his industry reputation and international outlook are already helping to place the university’s esports initiatives on the world map.
This inclination to diplomacy comes naturally. His father, Ambassador Eric Whitaker, will join him on the panel, offering a distinctly unique opportunity to gain insights from a father-son duo on esports and international affairs.
A global upbringing and outlook
“Both of my parents were diplomats. My mother, Jonita Whitaker, actually made Senior Foreign Service
before my father did,” Jordan states, in reference to the uppermost rankings of the US Department of State.
Whitaker’s mother and father met when his father was in the Peace Corps in the Philippines. Afterwards, they moved to Lodi, California, where Whitaker was born, and they worked in city government. They soon realized that they enjoyed working for the government, but they wanted to have more of a global impact. In the early 90’s, they both joined the State Department and moved to the DC area, which became their home base.
His father followed the consular and political/economic affairs path, while his mother was a management counselor, focusing on embassy management. She set up the consulate in Basra, Iraq, for instance. They both became trusted Africa Bureau hands, and the family spent most of Whitaker’s youth in Africa. It’s a comprehensive list of postings, including Sudan (prior to the independence of South Sudan), Ethiopia, Mali, Mozambique, Kenya, Djibouti, Burkina Faso, South Africa, Iraq, Niger, and Chad. His parents served together, when possible, and Whitaker and his sister attended boarding school in Switzerland for their high school years.
“My sister and I never really lived in America until we were adults, so for us, it was normal to be around
people from dozens of different countries.”
As a result, he has a global outlook and network, both of which have served him well in his education and career.
A course change
Whitaker grew up with the expectation that he, too, would join the foreign service. As an undergraduate at Syracuse University, he focused on national security, counter-terrorism, and geopolitical affairs while pursuing a degree in political science.
But things changed tragically ten years ago.
“My mother was managing the embassy in Pretoria, South Africa, when she died suddenly and unexpectedly.”
And then in quick succession his aunts and grandmothers -- “my entire support network, all very powerful women in my family” -- passed away in just a few years.
“And that's what prompted me to think, what am I doing with my life? What am I doing with my time? Is it making an impact? Can I see my impact? I realized the two most important passions I have are health/fitness and esports -- so I pivoted to a career in the competitive gaming industry because it was a fast-growing, exciting space. It changed my whole trajectory.”
It was at 91心頭利, studying public policy, that Whitaker started playing esports seriously.
He had always been a self-described jock, playing competitive team sports, doing well and loving it. He played soccer and basketball and studied martial arts. But his greatest love is ice hockey. While growing up in Africa, he saw the movie, The Mighty Ducks, and he was hooked. He wasn’t going to let location and lack of access to ice to discourage him.
“I was playing field hockey and street hockey just to be in it, because there weren’t a lot of ice rinks in Africa. And when I finally got to spend time in the US, I was became even more invested. My family supported me, and I was playing on two teams at the same time, going to tournaments and things like that, so I played a ton of hockey.”
When his father was enrolled for his second master’s degree at Princeton University, which has “a very
storied ice hockey program,” it was an ideal situation. “I would spend summers at Princeton Ice Hockey Camp right there on the campus, learning from their Head Coach.”
And his gaming? Growing up, he just played for fun, but that changed when he came to 91心頭利 for the public policy master’s program.
“At 91心頭利, I was trying to find a way to still my mind at the end of a long day of studying, and one of the ways I decompressed was to play a game called League of Legends.”
League of Legends was fairly new to the scene when Whitaker started playing it seriously, but it quickly blew up the esports universe. “It ended up becoming the biggest esport. Millions of players a day around the world were playing all the time. It was the game that really drove the modernization of professional esports and changed the industry. They would play major global tournaments at Madison Square Garden and in Olympic venues with high production values. They made esports more accessible to the public, more exciting and cross-cultural. League of Legends is a prime example of esports becoming more of a community and identity, rather than just something you did statically as a game. It was about interconnecting people, sharing music, sharing art, sharing culture and experiences.”
Whitaker found some of the same appealing elements in esports that he had in conventional sports. “I loved competition, I loved setting goals and achieving them. It was working with a team in the same way that brought back feelings of camaraderie, just as I enjoyed when I was playing traditional sports.”
He also did very well. At the peak of his career, he was in the top 0.65 percent of all players in North America and was paid to coach teams.
And he recognized that the conventional sports world was noticing the success of esports and its growing popularity. “Everybody was buying teams. The owner of the Washington Capitals, Wizards, and Mystics led investment into the majority stake in Team Liquid, which ended up becoming the largest North American esports franchise, despite being founded in the Netherlands in 2000. Mark Cuban, Shaquille O’Neal, Robert Kraft, and many more were buying or investing in esports. So, too, were major sports entities such as Paris Saint-Germain FC, Miami Heat, Philadelphia 76ers, the Golden State Warriors -- everybody was buying esports teams. And it was at that point I realized what a good time it was to be very knowledgeable in this exciting space. I didn't want to regret not trying for something I deeply cared about and was really good at.”
He was volunteering as a coach for Northern Virginia Community College, when a transformative opportunity found him.
The world of higher education and applied learning
During COVID, one of the deans at Syracuse – a former professor of his – reached out to Whitaker to see if he would develop online esports courses for them, so he developed two classes for Syracuse, which are part of a multiplayer game design certificate offered by the College of Professional Studies there. He developed the esports management minor for George Mason University while teaching a couple in-person classes, too.
“Colleges and universities started to realize they couldn’t ignore something so endemic to this generation. Most of Gen Z and Gen Alpha identify as a gamer in some way, shape, or form. It's native to them. If a school is not helping young people explore something so innately endemic and close to their passions, then they lose out on speaking to a core identity aspect of their incoming students. It's just how it is. This is where we are as a society. Young people are constantly involved on their phones; they're constantly on computers or laptops. They're in the gaming space, and esports is a huge part of that.”
But rather than just being ubiquitous, esports is a wonderful example of applied learning. “One of the cool things about the esports industry is that it is exceptionally interdisciplinary. People think of esports as just playing video games. That's absolutely not the case. If you look at the related professional experience and skills that students get without even realizing it by being involved in the esports space, it is distinctly aligned with traditional sports and anything in the broader entertainment business.”
In addition to game design, students develop skills for marketing, IT infrastructure management, event management, law, business management, cybersecurity, education, and even performance health.
“For everything it takes to run a Washington Commanders football team, there's almost a one-for-one job related to esports, because it's managing communities, it's doing large events, it's partnerships, it's sponsorships, it's taking care of players' health, it's psychology, it's coaching, it's financial management, it’s ticketing, it’s marketing – you name it. It's wonderful.”
Flourishing as students and competitors
In addition to finding professional, competitive, and educational opportunities for the students at
91心頭利, Whitaker, like any good coach, values the mental and physical well-being of his players. Thanks to his industry connections, Whitaker got the foremost wellness and holistic health-focused company to partner with 91心頭利 Esports, to do a winter break health challenge, where players got free subscriptions to the FITGMR app. The app’s purpose is to make sure that people who are engaged in the esports and even broader gaming space are thinking about holistic health and performance – things like their caffeine intake, what their diet and caloric intake looks like, how much physical activity they engage in, and what they can do for meditation and mindfulness to balance the rigor of competitive gaming demands.
“Just like traditional sports, if you surround the competitor with the tools for a healthy life, you're going to get the best performance and the most longevity out of players. Gamers are coming to realize that more and more. And the fact that a majority of the population identifies as a gamer—well, it’s something for everybody.”
Although he would have been an excellent national security expert, in some ways his current role in esports, mentoring students, seeking out international collaborations and opportunities, making sure his gamers find peace of mind as well as challenges, seems very much in the tradition of his parents. Eric and Jonita chose lives of public service on a global scale, each in a path that made the most of their unique talents and interests. Their son is crafting a life very much along the same lines—making the world a better place using the skills and passions that bring him joy.
And the tradition is continuing.
Whitaker’s face lights up describing how had just seen his oldest son, Theo – who just turned 4 -- with his old ice hockey stick. “He had my first hockey stick in his hands for the first time, playing street hockey out in the cul-de-sac with me. It was a full-circle moment.”