After over 30 years in the gaming industry, Virginia McDowell, KLN ‘80, has retired, but that doesn’t mean that she’s slowed down. McDowell sits on the boards of five nonprofit organizations, including the one she helped found: Global Gaming Women. McDowell sees a clear line from her time at Klein College as a journalism major through her groundbreaking career as the first female CEO in her industry and her continuing commitment to giving back.

From her earliest years sitting on top of the card catalog in the library of the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, where her father was the director, McDowell felt destined for a life in a newsroom. She clearly remembers the sanctuary of the library and the excitement she felt when the presses started up, rattling the entire building. She wanted to be a reporter who made a difference in the world. 

As a journalism student at Temple University, McDowell took an internship working for consumer affairs reporter and multiple Emmy winner Herb Denenberg at the CBS network affiliate in Philadelphia. At the end of her year as an intern, Denenberg offered McDowell a full-time position at the station running the office. She was 19 years old. 

“Graduating from college is very, very important to me,” McDowell told him. “While I’m absolutely thrilled with this offer, and gratified and stunned, my education is too important to me.” 

She hadn’t understood what he had in mind, McDowell remembers. “Herb characteristically said, ‘I didn’t say anything about dropping out of college.’” McDowell took the job, working full time, attending her Temple classes at night and waitressing on the weekend to pay for gas. 

The opportunity paid dividends. Before she was 20 years old, McDowell was already remote-producing television shows along the East Coast. “It was a dream job,” said McDowell. “I got to work with all of these fabulous communicators.”

By the time she had graduated, McDowell had already had a career that many journalists dream of. She loved her work, but she was hungry to try something new. 

Legalized gaming was opening up the industry in Atlantic City, and the jobs were highly prized

“Most of the people who were working in PR at that time were former reporters,” said McDowell. “My boss was a former AP bureau chief. When you can hand them a résumé as a graduating senior with multiple years of broadcast journalism experience, it gives you a little bit of a leg up. That was one of the benefits of my degree from Temple.”

McDowell acknowledges that timing was another advantage. “For people who wanted to advance their careers, there were so many openings and so many opportunities that they were pretty much colorblind and gender blind.” Many of the women in senior positions in the industry now, she says, started their careers in Atlantic City in the early 1980s. 

A combination of the hiring climate, her natural talent for business and hard work propelled McDowell up the ladder in the gaming industry. She became president and CEO of Isle of Capri gaming in 2007, the first woman in the industry to earn that title. McDowell wanted to keep the inclusive spirit of early Atlantic City alive, and focused on using her status to help others from the outset. 

“One of my first priorities as a leader in publicly traded gaming companies was to make sure that we always had those opportunities for advancement available for everybody,” she said.

It was also important to her to find ways to give back outside of her industry. Her father had encouraged her to make a difference, and as a business leader, giving to nonprofits was always central to her business plan.

McDowell became CEO at a time that couldn’t have been worse for financial giving, however. The 2008 recession had just hit, and not only did Isle of Capri lose a number of its facilities, it had to cut all of its philanthropic giving. Rather than detering McDowell, the crisis inspired her. 

“We had access to time, treasure and talent,” she said. “We lost the treasure, but we still had the time and the talent.” The company organized crews to do service projects and gave employees time off to volunteer. McDowell’s nationwide community service program, Community Aces, grew out of that initial effort. 

In 2016, McDowell retired from Isle of Capri to focus on her charitable work, saying, “It’s time for somebody else to do this so that I can do all these other things that I want to do!”

One of those things was working with colleagues to create Global Gaming Women, a nonprofit organization that supports and and trains women in the industry. Women who are interested in getting started can get résumé help and advice. Those who already work in gaming, can take advantage of high level management training, all of it free of charge. 

McDowell’s favorite part of her work is bringing women together. 

“You’re basically forced to network. You’re forced to meet a broad-based group of women,” she said. “And we hear from all the time ‘I didn’t know other women were struggling with the things I am.’”

Sheila Bangalore, assistant general counsel at the gaming company Aristocrat Technologies, describes McDowell as “iconic” for herself and other women in the industry, and says that it was a dream come true to have the chance to benefit from McDowell’s mentorship at a Global Gaming Women leadership conference. 

“She’s an active listener and a strategic thinker,” said Bangalore.  “It doesn’t matter where you are in your career, she’s very open to helping you find ways to own your skills, and to hone them.”

McDowell describes her work as a labor of love, and one motivated by her own life. “I look at these young women coming up right now, and I see myself in them.”