She is the Music will honor Gracie Abrams for a special event at the Peppermint Club in Los Angeles later this month, the advocacy group announced on Thursday, for an evening that will also honor 50 accomplished women in the business while trying to build out a larger community for the next generation of women in the industry.
The event, called Women Sharing the Spotlight, is slated for March 27, with partnership from Live Nation Women and TuneCore, while The Hollywood Reporter is serving as the event’s media partner. During the event, Dr. Stacy Smith of USC’s Annenberg Inclusion Initative will present the latest findings from this year’s annual Inclusion in the Music Business report alongside TuneCore CEO Andreea Gleeson.
To hone in on efforts to uplift one another, She is the Music is asking the 50 women being honored to bring a woman earlier in her career to the event to help build out their networks and establish more opportunities to develop their careers.
“Our ethos is women supporting women. We asked our honorees to bring women they see as rising stars the next generation of women,” Jody Gerson, the chairman and CEO of Universal Music Publishing Group and a co-founder of She is the Music, tells THR. “This is how you create real community. When women really create sisterhood and community and push each other forward, that’s when we’re going to see real change.”
She is the Music is honoring both Abrams and her mainly women-led team, with Gerson calling Abrams “an artist who walks the walk” in representing the organization’s values.
“Being surrounded by such an incredible team of women has changed the way I see everything,” Abrams said in a statement. “They’re not only insanely talented in their individual capacities, but also intentional about supporting each other. I am grateful for the opportunity to learn from each of them. I’m deeply honored to be recognized by She Is the Music, an organization that has done so much to acknowledge and uplift women in this industry. I hope our team is a small example of what’s possible when women support each other and build together.”
Alicia Keys, another co-founder of the organization, will honor Abrams and the team at the event.
“Gracie Abrams and her incredible team are living proof of what happens when women uplift each other—when we step into our power, we change the game,” Keys said in a statement. “In an industry where female-led teams are still the exception, their success is a reminder that we belong in every room, at every table, leading every conversation. She Is the Music is about breaking barriers, opening doors, and making sure the next generation of women in music don’t just have a seat at the table—they build the table.”
She Is the Music’s event will come just weeks after the Annenberg Initiative report has once again detailed a music industry that remains sluggish in championing women in executive roles.
Across 37 music companies analyzed for the study, just 13 percent of the CEOs or presidents were women, stagnant with figures from four years ago.
Gerson, one of the few women CEOs in the industry, acknowledged the lack of improvement and the need to get better but says that “it takes time,” while emphasizing that the path to improvement is about “elevating women, not knocking men down.”
“The reason for our event is that you’ll have experienced women in our event, helping them and creating space for them,” Gerson says. “I truly believe we’re making progress. There’s a lot of women who are ambitious enough to run a company, there’s more than when I came into the business. I believe a woman running a company has to be more conscious of bringing more women in.”
The Annenberg report and its call for improving the business’s ranks also comes as the Trump administration is cracking down on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives altogether, with many industries including the broader entertainment business beginning to deprioritize DEI in his wake.
Gerson, brought up the importance of hiring the best candidates as well as better training them, but she also says that regardless of whether or not there’s a DEI mandate, the music business has to prioritize having a workforce that reflects their diverse artist class, including race and gender.
“It’s not merely about meeting DEI mandates, we touch culture, music is a unifier, and to do that our ranks should look like our artists,” Gerson says. “Imagine if we were a business and all the creative areas only had one kind of person, we’d only be signing one kind of music. Even without DEI, we’re an industry that shouldn’t change just because it’s not mandated. We should be the shining example of diversity because what we put out in the world is diverse. we should feel a responsibility to our industry to hire diverse teams of people.”
Source: Hollywoodreporter
