Dungeons & Dragons VP Jess Lanzillo Leaves Wizards of the Coast
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Another veteran member of the Dungeons & Dragons brand team is leaving, with Vice President Jess Lanzillo announcing her departure from Wizards of the Coast. This marks the third senior member of the D&D team to leave in as many months, following the recent exits of Creative Director Chris Perkins and Game Director Jeremy Crawford (both of whom also just announced new positions with Critical Role’s Darrington Press).
Lanzillo has been with Wizards of the Coast for eight years, having worked extensively on Magic: The Gathering for most of her career before recently transitioning into a new role as VP of Franchise and Product for Dungeons & Dragons.
So just what does Lanzillos’ departure mean for the future of D&D? Below, we break out all the details.
Who is Jess Lanzillo?
Jess Lanzillo is a former senior executive at Wizards of the Coast, having worked extensively on both Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons. Lanzillo first joined WotC in 2017 where she helped spearhead the art direction and narrative of a number of MtC card sets. In 2021, she was promoted to VP of Creative for Magic, before being promoted again in 2022 to a Chief of Staff role under then President Cynthia Williams (who herself left Wotc after a little over a year).
In late 2023, Lanzillo stepped into the high-profile position as Vice President, Franchise & Product for Dungeons & Dragons. During her brief tenure, she oversaw a number of major initiatives, including the revamping of core rulebooks, the 50th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons and the development of the now defunct Project Sigil VTT.
Why is Jess Lanzillo leaving Wizards of the Coast?
It’s still not entirely clear why Lanzillo is departing WotC given that she was only recently promoted to her new VP role a little over a year ago. In her post on LinkedIn she notes:
After eight years at Wizards of the Coast, I have made the totally reasonable decision to leave a job where I got paid to argue about whether fictional lizard people can have tails. (Of course they can.)
My trajectory at Wizards has been wonderfully unhinged: leading creative during an absolutely wild ride with Magic: The Gathering, doing business things as Chief of Staff, and finally, getting to be the VP of the Dungeons & Dragons franchise — which is either the best job title ever invented or proof that late-stage capitalism has finally achieved absolute absurdity. Take that, liberal arts naysayers!
Wizards turns imaginary worlds into real communities, which sounds fake but is actually the most satisfying work in the world. To everyone who let me champion this mission while constantly asking “can you add more glowies?” — you are perfect and I love you.
I’ve been ridiculously fortunate for these eight years, and now I’m lucky enough to, yet again, get to choose my own plot twist. The best part about having super specific creative obsessions is that occasionally the universe decides to reward you for them. More soon!
Final Thoughts
It doesn’t bode well that the Dungeons & Dragons team has seen the departure of so many high profile leaders in such a short period of time and many are speculating that there’s more going on here than simple turn over. In fact, Lanzillo has been quite active in recent months as a spokesperson for D&D, having been interviewed in AdWeek and CNBC, so her departure seems particularly abrupt. It also leaves yet another vacancy during a critical period in the development of the D&D game.
We’ll be keeping a close eye on this story as it develops and will update this page with more info as it’s available.
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Cameron Nichols is a Senior Editor who lives in Boston, Massachusetts, and has been playing D&D since the early 90s, when he was introduced by his older brother and cut his teeth on AD&D 2nd Edition. Since then he’s played virtually every RPG he could get his nerdy little mitts on (including a weird Goth phase in the early 2000s when he rocked Vampire: The Masquerade pretty hard). His favorite D&D campaign setting is the Forgotten Realms and his favorite character to play was a Half-Orc Barbarian named Grug (who was unfortunately devoured by a gelatinous cube).
