Michelle Carney

Vice President of Global Lottery Marketing, Brightstar Lottery

Published August 19, 2025

Nominated by the Illinois Lottery

How do you coordinate 47 different lotteries to launch the same product, on the same day, at the same time, without problems?

You ask Michelle Carney to do it.

Michelle Carney stepped in as the Project Manager for the new Mega Millions game change in the winter of 2023 and immediately created an organizational structure to manage the various aspects of this intricate and broadly distributed change.

With an organizational structure in place, she quickly went about getting the right people on committees to efficiently work through the issues, while representing the complicated nature of individual lottery systems. With the committees staffed, she developed a timeline that was aggressive but realistic – one that took into consideration the time demands on lotteries and their business partners but didn’t place the go-live date so far into the future that it gave a sense of unlikelihood.

She worked tirelessly – answering questions, attending coordination meetings, sharing information broadly, and helping lotteries work through difficult issues. She did all this with a smile and infectious energy. She made the team feel as though they could conquer the world.

Fast forward to April 4, 2025. The $2 Mega Millions draw closed for the last time and the new $5 game launched across the country – in 47 individual jurisdictions with 47 individual sets of rules, gaming systems, iLottery platforms, mobile apps, and in-lane. Not to mention 47 different marketing strategies, 47 sets of business requirements, 47… 47… 47…

And what happened? Everywhere and nothing. The game went live everywhere. The launch went smoothly, didn’t cause mass outages, and people even forgot it was happening. Mega Millions was still selling, and the new game began bringing in more money for beneficiaries.

All of this is because of Michelle Carney – her organizational skills, patience, industry knowledge, and positive relationships.

While the Illinois Lottery is proud to formally nominate Michelle Carney for a 2025 Powers Award, the Mega Millions Consortium, on behalf of the U.S. lottery industry, would like to thank her for her amazing work as well.