Peter Adkison was born in Walla Walla, Washington and grew up in Idaho. He received a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Walla Walla College in 1985 and, earned his MBA from the University of Washington’s Executive MBA program (Class of 1997).

Peter is the founder and former Chief Executive Officer of Wizards of the Coast, Inc., a multi-million dollar game company headquartered in Renton, Washington.

Mr. Adkison began his career as an engineer with The Boeing Company in their Defense and Space Group working on various development efforts for the US Government.

In 1990, while still employed at The Boeing Company, Peter and six other young professionals founded Wizards of the Coast. They had all been creating, developing and playing role-playing games in their spare time and shared a vision of establishing careers in the adventure gaming business.

Just three years later, Wizard’s of the Coast broke out of its shell having created an entirely new genre of games with the release of the first trading card game, the Magic: The Gathering game, which is now published in 10 languages and is played around the world. This breakthrough rocketed the company from sales of $100,000 in 1993 to $2 Million, in one year, and to sales of over $1 Billion at its peak. During that period, the company also obtained the worldwide rights (outside of Japan) to market the highly popular Pokemon game, which was developed as a successor to Magic.

Adkison’s vision for Wizards of the Coast was to establish games as a fun entertainment choice for people of all ages. Following this vision, Wizards of the Coast has opened and purchased various retail locations, including Wizards of the Coast Game Center and Wizards of the Coast national retail outlets.

In September 1999, Wizards of the Coast was sold for more than $325 Million to Hasbro, Inc, the worldwide leader and manufacturer of toys, games interactive software and infant products.

Peter resides in Seattle and, in his spare time pursues his interests of rock climbing, snow boarding, dancing and, of course, gaming.