Good morning! Female OpenAI employees are concerned about the company's gender disparity, Gwynne Shotwell says competition is good for SpaceX, and Fortune's Ellie Austin shares why a major music publisher doesn't want to be the only woman at the top—and what she learned from Taylor Swift.
- Charting progress. When she joined Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG) in 2015, Jody Gerson became the first woman to serve as CEO of a major music publisher.
Although her appointment marked progress in a historically male-dominated industry, Gerson, who previously held senior roles at Sony and EMI, was not complacent. “When I came into this job, I said publicly that I wouldn’t be satisfied if, when I left this job, I was still the only woman," she says. "I could be the first. I didn’t want to be the only.”
The global publishing arm of Universal Music Group, UMPG represents songwriters such as Adele, Taylor Swift, SZA, and Elton John. It also manages the catalogs of the Bee Gees, ABBA, and Bob Dylan, whose more than 600 songs it purchased in a blockbuster 2020 deal estimated to be worth over $300 million. Under Gerson’s leadership, the company’s annual revenue has more than doubled to $2 billion and she has also played a pivotal role in securing rights and royalties for artists as the industry evolves. Earlier this year, UMG pulled its music from TikTok until the platform agreed to better payment terms and AI protections for its artists, in a deal that set a new precedent for the treatment of creators in the digital age.
“My job is to make sure songwriters can earn a living,” says Gerson. “I love every platform that wants to utilize music but you have to be able to contribute to the value of that music.” In addition to being CEO, Gerson is chairperson of UMPG and also oversees Polygram Entertainment, Universal's film and TV division.
While the industry embraces new technologies, its progress with gender parity is slower. Gerson now has a handful of female peers, including Sylvia Rhone, CEO and chairperson, Epic Records, and Desiree Perez, CEO of Roc Nation, but the business is still largely run by men. (Julie Greenwald, the former CEO and chairperson of Atlantic Music Group, recently stepped down and will leave the company in January.) “There are not many C-suite women right now. We have to come together to change that,” Gerson says.
For her part, in 2018, Gerson cofounded She Is The Music, a global nonprofit that campaigns for more women at all levels of the industry. She also advocates for women to be “uber sensitive” about putting themselves—and each other—forward for opportunities. Gerson recalls “playing the nice girl” to get ahead earlier in her career but today, she advises other women to emulate the ambition and self-assurance of Taylor Swift, Charli XCX, Billie Eilish, and the other female artists dominating the charts and zeitgeist.
“I always say that Taylor Swift has taught me more about my own power than anyone else,” she says. (Universal stepped in as Swift's recorded music partner following her departure from Big Machine Records and the dispute over ownership of her masters that preceded her re-recordings of her own albums.) “I grew up making myself small to make men feel bigger. Taylor Swift is unapologetic in her ambition. She stands strong. This generation is learning a lot from her.”
Ellie Austin
ellie.austin@fortune.com
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