Yael Swerdlow is the CEO and Founder of Maestro Games, SPC. Yael is co-founder of the Women's Empowerment Foundation, a board member of the International Visitors Council of Los Angeles and Shelters for Israel, on the Advisory Board of First Amendment Voice, Solution Point+, and a consultant at USC's award-winning Game Pipe Labs. She serves on both the National Small Business Association's Leadership Council Advisory Board (NSBA) and the Small Business Technology Council (SBTC). Formerly, she was co-chair of the national leadership council of Games for Change.

A native Angeleno, Yael was a photojournalist based in Los Angeles for over twenty years, where she was a part of the LA Times Pulitzer Prize winning teams for the Los Angeles Riots in 1992 and the Northridge Earthquake of 1994. In summer of 1994, Yael went to Somalia, Southern Sudan, and Rwanda for International Medical Corps, to document the reestablishing of the medical infrastructure in those war-torn countries.