His student passion led to global gaming career
After studying journalism and working for Carolina athletics, David Tinson manages global customer experience for Electronic Arts.
During his earliest days as a Carolina student, David Tinson ’96 found a passion that launched him on a career path in the world’s largest entertainment sector, video games.
In his first fall semester, Tinson met Jacqui Steadman Greene ’94, who told him about her job as a student assistant in the Athletic Department’s sports information office. “It sounded like the coolest job in the world,” he said.
Though admittedly a bit introverted, Tinson hustled to the office, snagged an interview and was hired to start the job the next fall.
That led to three years of working in athletics media relations while taking classes at what is now the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media. There he honed knowledge that he still uses in his job as chief experience officer at Electronic Arts. EA is the world’s largest independent publisher of video games like Madden NFL and The Sims. Tinson oversees marketing, communications, sales, customer care and all go-to-market functions, leading nearly 2,000 people in 34 countries. His team’s job, Tinson said, is “to drive demand for our business by telling the stories of our games and what makes them special, building our brands globally and listening to our community to make their experience amazing.”
He’s at the center of a global video game industry that is worth $200 billion, more than all other entertainment sectors combined, according to Bloomberg’s “Wall Street Week.” Tinson said that 3 billion people play interactive games.
Tinson’s family moved to Matthews, North Carolina, when he was 5. His parents encouraged him and his three brothers to go to college wherever they felt they’d succeed. Although his brothers attended Notre Dame and Providence, Tinson listened to his father’s advice about Carolina.
“He said, ‘If you go to a state school, there’s no reason in the world to go anywhere other than North Carolina because it’s the best one there is,’” Tinson remembered.
When the basketball team won the 1993 national championship, he couldn’t wait to begin the student assistant job. The journalism major supported game day media relations for the men’s basketball and football teams and promoted other teams like baseball. What he learned in classes like newswriting he used almost every day on the job as he absorbed the inner workings of big-time college athletics.
“I felt like I was in the center of the universe of learning, both in the classroom and on the job. I remember that if you misspelled a person’s name, it was minus 50, so you instantly failed. I use commas correctly to this day, I triple-check news sources. It was all real, very specific, practical things,” he said.
Fact-checking is something he often discusses with his sons. “I couldn’t have known at the time that it would be such an essential part of navigating today’s world,” he said.
He also didn’t recognize at the time how his Carolina days were preparing him for a career. “I learned to seek context, be curious, have good editorial instincts and how to connect the dots to synthesize a good story. This is essential to building business strategy in my role today,” Tinson said.
After graduating, Tinson worked in athletics media relations at the University of Texas at Austin, then NBC Sports and at Carolina before joining EA in 2003.
He’s been fortunate to be around inspiring and talented mentors. “They were good to me because I was curious, and I didn’t think anything was above me. I felt that I needed to know how to do a little bit of everything, and having that range served me well,” he said.
