To call Jacqueline Beauchamp an entrepreneur would hardly do her justice. Yes, she is decidedly different from traditional digital media industry players. Not only is Beauchamp a female in a male-dominated field, but she’s also one of the very few black women in the industry.
Aside from breaking molds and defying expectations, what truly sets Beauchamp apart from the world of video games and digital media is her ability to create a growing, successful company in a city that is decidedly behind the curve in arts, entertainment and tech culture.
Nerjyzed Entertainment isn’t just putting out the first console video game [think Xbox 360] produced in Baton Rouge, her company is drawing from a national and local talent pool to create the industry that city and state leaders so eagerly covet. Mike Odom, the Baton Rouge Area Chamber’s senior vice president of marketing and operations who has worked with Beauchamp extensively to foster digital media growth in the city, says she’s more than an innovator, she’s a “trailblazer who has added credibility to a movement that is only in its infancy.”
But Beauchamp says her contributions are not driven from a desire to defy the odds. “I wasn’t trying to prove anyone wrong. I was just trying to run my business well.”
Beauchamp has been in the game for almost two decades, working her way up at IBM to lead teams there and at Motorola. Some of the technology we use every day—such as the silicon used to produce DVDs—can be linked to Beauchamp’s work. But it wasn’t until she ventured out on her own to create Nerjyzed Entertainment that she realized just how much she could accomplish.
There were obvious challenges Beauchamp had to overcome, but neither the naysayers nor the obstacles deterred her. When she started, a lot of people told her she was crazy. But it didn’t work. “And I said, ‘Maybe, but it’s something that’s inside of me, that I’m going to do, as opposed to what I want to do,’” she says. “I knew that I was prepared to go and do this.”
And coming from Texas to nurture Nerjyzed in Baton Rouge also was something that felt right to Beauchamp. A combination of the timing with digital media incentives, the draw of returning to her hometown and the push from city and state leaders to improve the region drew Beauchamp to set up shop at the Louisiana Technology Park on Florida Boulevard.
“It felt right, it literally felt right. We had all of this new energy from the new mayor, the chamber, the Generation X as I call it, of leadership that was starting to be put in place,” she says. “They were driven to create a new Baton Rouge. It was a vision that you could easily connect to and then be a part of.”
And now that Beauchamp and Nerjyzed are a part of the new digital media growth in the Capital Region, she and her company are thriving. Last month, Beauchamp headed to New York for a round of interviews with the press about Nerjyzed’s BCF Xperience game, which is a combination college football and drumline game for Xbox 360. “We’re in a growth stage,” she says. “We’re getting ready to make our mark on an industry and on Baton Rouge.”
