Asmodee has named Carly McGinnis its Chief Product Officer and EVP Publishing, effective immediately. She succeeds Jean-Sébastien de Barros, who will leave the company after nearly a decade in several leadership roles, most recently as CPO.
For tabletop readers, the useful part is the job itself. This is the executive position that sits over Asmodee’s product organisation at a company with studios, franchises, licensing, marketing and a distribution network all pulling on the same catalogue. It is a major leadership change, but not a release calendar: Asmodee has not attached any new games, prices, dates, or product roadmap to the announcement.
What Asmodee announced
Asmodee said McGinnis will report to CEO Thomas Kœgler and join the Executive Management Team. The appointment is immediate.
McGinnis arrives from inside the group. She was most recently CEO of Exploding Kittens, where Asmodee says she helped grow the publisher internationally, including expansion to more than 50 countries and localisation into more than 25 languages. The company also credits her with helping take the IP beyond tabletop through its Netflix partnership.
That background makes the appointment legible without turning it into a prediction. McGinnis has run a brand built around approachable social games and broad international reach; the new role gives her responsibility across a much wider publishing portfolio. What that means for individual studios or games has not been announced.
Why the role matters now
BoardGameWire’s reporting provides the clearest public description of the position’s breadth: Asmodee’s CPO role covers studios, franchise development, licensing, and studio marketing. That means the change is relevant to much more than one brand or one future box on a shelf.
The timing also lands after a year in which Asmodee’s headline growth and its own-published board-game performance did not move in lockstep. BoardGameWire reports that distribution and trading-card games were major drivers of the group’s growth, while the company’s own board-game sales had fallen in the year to March before returning to modest growth in the following quarter. That is trade-reporting context, not a claim that McGinnis has been hired to fix a defined problem.
The restraint matters. A leadership appointment can tell readers who will be in the room for future portfolio decisions. It cannot honestly tell them which studio is getting a greenlight, whether a favourite line is changing, or how next year’s release slate will look.
A transition, not a buyer alert
De Barros joined Asmodee in 2017 and became CPO in 2024, according to BoardGameWire. In its announcement, Asmodee credited him with strengthening its publishing capabilities, diversifying its brand and IP portfolio, and helping launch its biggest trading-card game to date.
Those are material contributions, but this is still a corporate transition rather than a customer-facing product announcement. There is no reason for buyers to read it as a signal to rush out for, avoid, or expect a particular game.
The clean takeaway
The confirmed news is simple: Carly McGinnis is now Asmodee’s CPO and EVP Publishing, reporting to Thomas Kœgler; Jean-Sébastien de Barros is departing. Her experience at Exploding Kittens makes the move notable for a company that publishes and distributes tabletop games around the world.
The next useful evidence will be concrete: studio announcements, product plans, or strategy updates that show how this new leadership structure changes the portfolio. Until then, the appointment is an important industry signal, not a verdict on any game or a substitute for a release roadmap.
For more tabletop coverage, visit our board-games lane, revisit our Asmodee revenue split analysis, read about Asmodee’s Time’s Up! acquisition, or catch up on the Middle-earth partner slate.
