Lydia

Lydia "Lydia" Picknell is a Canadian SMITE player. She is currently the manager for Paradigm.

Biography
Lydia was born and raised in Ottawa, Canada. She lived in Toronto, Canada and London, England in 2014 for culinary school and a culinary internship at a Hilton Hotel. She graduated Police Foundations at Algonquin College in 2012, and previously studied General Law at Carleton University. She used to write a blog that promoted indie country musicians, and found out about SMITE around the end of that blog's lifetime. She has no previous e-sports experience before SMITE, but has been playing since 2012: becoming the first female player to play in an official Hi-Rez Weekly Tournament. She continued to play with AnatoLiy, who she met in a casual game until he joined Team Dignitas, leaving her to play for amateur teams as hunters or supports. She began streaming on Twitch.tv in December 2014 after returning home to Ottawa, Canada. She immediately became coach and manager to eloFisherS, a top Challengers Cup team in Europe who missed the pro league by one win.

She became the manager of Upcoming Stars in August 12th, 2015. The team got picked up by Team JusTus on August 14th, 2015. She left Team JusTus on September 13th to join Paradigm as Assistant Manager and became part owner of Paradigm in November 2015. On March 23rd, 2016 she became the full owner and manager of Paradigm with the departure of Zimpstar.

She was passionate about improving the Smite international competitive scene and currently served as coach to the Oceanic region with Avant Garde and the South American scene with Rebirth eSports.

Lydia participated in international speaker panels on equality in gaming and promoting eSports, with dates like SXSW, Chicago Video Game Law Summit, Ottawa Game Expo, and more. She's been featured on Polygon, IGN, The Daily Dot, Dexerto, Team Dignitas, and more for her advocacy and coaching ability.

In early September 2016, Paradigm and Lydia came under fire over the terms of their SMITE team's contract. Lydia stated that Paradigm was being taxed an absurd amount for reasons she declined to share with her team, if left unpaid, Paradigm would be closed by the Canadian government. Lydia continued to withhold her finance reports from her team, and eventually brought in David "Smugglinrum" Fry II, best known as the CEO of popular former SMITE team COGnitive Gaming to act as Paradigm's representative. Fry demanded that the Paradigm SMITE team would sign the contract, or otherwise be unable to play in the upcoming Pro League matches. The contract, widely viewed as unfair and unjust, demanded that all sales for the Paradigm skin, 50% of social media and streaming platforms revenue and 25% of all winnings would be given to Paradigm. In exchange, the players would receive the other 50% social media revenue as well as a $1.00 USD salary per month. Obviously, the community as well as the players found this to be a joke, and the SMITE team quickly left the organization. Paradigm was banned from all future SMITE events and lost its spot in the SPL to captain Lawbster. After this debacle, Lydia retired from e-Sports in ignominy.

Trivia

 * Lydia was the first female to compete in an official Hi-Rez weekly tournament. She subbed in as support for Reason Gaming after Snoopy slept in.
 * Her original username in SMITE was misschivas, then Lydiapocket.
 * She was the youngest person in Canadian history to run election campaigns (16 years old) - they won.
 * Used to be a major music blogger before getting involved in esports.
 * Former support main (2012 - 2014), now plays solo and mid.
 * She was a celebrity captain of a charity pro-am Divine Intervention tournament with Tiermonster. Team Lydia made top 16 both years. (Losing to Jerbie, PainDeViande and Adapting.)
 * She created Cloudxx with HalfDevil to troll Cloud9 in the final weekly before the Launch Tournament in 2014. They lost to IIIII.
 * She worked for 6 months to get Paradigm Awilix in the game. It was added in March 2016.
 * Her favorite movie is Thor.

Vlogs
Krett's LatAm coaching announcement