In this iGaming Heroes interview, Clemence Dujardin, Group CEO of MyAffiliates, shares her perspective on leadership and on how the affiliate industry is being reshaped — a perspective grounded in her own journey from developing individual areas to leading the company as a whole. The 3S.INFO conversation centres on the trust issues between operators, affiliates and technology providers: opaque attribution, discrepancies in data, unequal positions between the parties, and affiliate programme closures without clear communication.
- MyAffiliates is an affiliate tracking system used in the iGaming industry to manage affiliate programmes and track conversions.
- You joined MyAffiliates back in 2012, and today you lead the company. What was the turning point when you realized you wanted to movebeyond developing individual areas and take responsibility for the company as a whole?
I don’t think there was a specific turning point. It was much more about adapting to what the business needed at different stages of its growth.
As MyAffiliates evolved, I could see its capabilities, but also where we needed to change, strengthen or develop things to allow the company to keep growing. My role naturally became broader because the needs of the business became broader.
Over time, that developed into having a much clearer vision for the company as a whole: where we could take it, what we could do differently and what we needed to put in place to get there.
For me, taking responsibility for the whole company was really an extension of that. It wasn’t about wanting the CEO title; it was about having a vision for the business and wanting to make it happen.
- The industry has changed dramatically over the years. Have you evolved with the market, or are there professional principles you have never been willing to compromise on?
Of course I’ve evolved. You have to. The industry I joined in 2012 is very different from the one we operate in today, and I think leaders who refuse to evolve eventually become the problem.
But evolving doesn’t mean changing your values depending on what is convenient.
I have always believed in being straightforward with people, treating people fairly and doing what you say you are going to do. That applies to clients, employees, affiliates, suppliers, everyone.
Sometimes that means having uncomfortable conversations. Sometimes it means saying no when saying yes would be easier or more profitable. I’m perfectly comfortable with that.
- Over the years, there must have been decisions that seemed right at first but later had to be reconsidered. Is there one decision that had a particularly strong impact on the way you approach leadership?
There have definitely been decisions I’ve reconsidered, but I’m not sure there is one specific decision I would single out.
What has changed most is my understanding of leadership itself. Earlier in my career, I probably thought being a good leader meant being involved in everything and being able to solve everything. As a company grows, that simply doesn’t work.
You have to build people who can make decisions without you. You have to allow different approaches, even when they aren’t exactly how you would have done something yourself. And you have to know when to get involved and when to get out of the way.
That has probably been one of the biggest evolutions in the way I lead.
- You’ve said publicly that clients don’t invest in a platform — they invest in the people behind it. It sounds great, but how does this actually influence who you hire and how you build your team?
Technical ability matters, obviously, but it isn’t enough.
I look a lot at attitude, curiosity and how somebody deals with other people. Skills can be developed. Product knowledge can be taught. It is much harder to teach someone to care.
Our clients aren't dealing with an anonymous piece of software. When something goes wrong, when they are launching a new brand, migrating a business or trying to understand an issue, they are dealing with our people.
So I want people who take ownership. People who don't hide behind processes or job titles. People who will say, “I don't know, but I'll find out.”
That mentality is incredibly important to me.
- After years in leadership, what has turned out to be the most challenging part of working with people rather than with the business itself?
That people aren't spreadsheets.
You can look at a commercial problem, analyse it and normally arrive at a reasonably logical answer. People don't work like that. They have ambitions, insecurities, personalities, things happening outside work, different ways of communicating and completely different motivations.
And leadership decisions involving people rarely affect only one person. They affect teams, relationships and sometimes the whole culture of a company.
You can make a decision that is objectively right for the business and still understand that it is difficult for the person sitting opposite you. Learning to hold both of those things at the same time is probably one of the hardest parts of leadership.
- You invest a lot in supporting women in the industry through mentoring, scholarships and WiGA. You describe it as “paying it forward.” Was there a moment in your own career when someone opened a door for you that has stayed with you ever since?
There wasn't one single person or moment. I was fortunate to have people throughout my career who trusted me with responsibility before I necessarily had the title that went with it. That matters because someone effectively says, “I think you can do this,” sometimes before you've completely decided that yourself.
But I also know that opportunity isn't distributed equally.
That's why “paying it forward” matters to me. If you reach a position where you can open a door, make an introduction, mentor somebody, fund a scholarship or simply put somebody's name forward, why wouldn't you?
And particularly with women, I think we need to move beyond talking about empowerment and actually create opportunities. The point isn't to help women because they are women. It's to make sure talented women aren't missing opportunities they deserve because nobody opened the door.
- You’ve spoken publicly about affiliate program closures and the need for greater transparency between operators and affiliates. Why do you think the market still hasn’t established clear rules of engagement in this area?
Because the balance of power isn't equal.
Affiliates can spend years building traffic and revenue for an operator, but ultimately the operator controls the programme, the terms and often the data. When commercial circumstances change, relationships that were described as partnerships can suddenly look very different.
I don't think the solution is necessarily enormous amounts of regulation or complicated rules. A lot of it comes down to basic commercial fairness: clear terms, reasonable notice, transparent communication and respecting the value that both parties contributed to the relationship.
If we want to call something a partnership, it needs to behave like one when circumstances become difficult, not only when everybody is making money.
- If we move beyond the usual talk about “trust and transparency,” where do you see the biggest source of mistrust today between operators, affiliates and technology providers?
Data.
Everyone has their own view of what happened to the same player. The affiliate sees one thing, the operator sees another, the platform records something else, and then everybody starts questioning whose numbers are correct.
Attribution has also become considerably more complicated. The customer journey isn't linear anymore and the technology environment around tracking and privacy continues to change.
I think the industry needs to become much better at making data understandable and auditable. Not simply providing more dashboards and more numbers, but allowing people to understand where those numbers came from.
Because when two parties can't independently understand why a number exists, trust disappears very quickly.
- If you could eliminate one practice from the affiliate industry — something that exists simply because “that’s how it’s always been done” — what would it be?
The acceptance of unnecessarily complicated commercial structures and processes simply because they have always existed.
Our industry has a remarkable ability to make relatively simple things incredibly complicated. Deals become complicated, reporting becomes complicated, attribution becomes complicated and then we build more technology to manage the complication we created ourselves.
Sometimes the best innovation is actually removing something.
I'd like us to question “why?” much more often. If the only answer is “because that's how we've always done it”, that's normally a very good reason to look at it again.
- After so many years in the same industry, what still makes you wake up thinking, “This is genuinely interesting”?
The fact that it still changes constantly.
Technology changes, regulation changes, markets open and close, companies appear and disappear, and the way customers behave keeps. Now we're talking seriously about AI, automation, first-party data and entirely different approaches to attribution.
But what keeps it interesting for me is also the people. I've worked in this industry for a long time and there are people I've known for well over a decade, while every year completely new people and ideas arrive.
I would be bored in an industry where I could predict what it was going to look like five years from now. I definitely can't say that about iGaming.
Want to become an iGaming Hero and raise your profile in the industry? Just fill out the form — it takes a couple of minutes, and we'll prepare the questions for you.
For the latest content, announcements and exclusive interviews with CPA experts, join our Telegram community.
QUICKFIRE
Revenue or reputation — which is harder to rebuild?
Reputation. Revenue can come back surprisingly quickly. Trust takes much longer.
What word or phrase would you ban from iGaming conferences?
“Game-changer.” If everything announced at conferences was genuinely a game-changer, we would be working in a completely different industry by now.
How do you switch off after a tough week?
Travel, being outside, spending time with the people I care about and occasionally just being completely alone. I'm actually quite good at needing people and needing nobody at exactly the same time.
What book or podcast has changed the way you think about work?
I don't think there is one. I probably learn more from conversations with people than I do from management books. I like hearing how people got somewhere, what drives them and how differently they see the same problem.
What’s one piece of advice you’d give to someone who wants to become a CEO in iGaming?
Don't focus on becoming a CEO. Focus on understanding the business. Be curious about the areas that aren't your responsibility, ask questions, take ownership and learn how all the pieces connect. The title should be the consequence, not the objective.
