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As the highest-ranking female executive in the music industry, the first female chairman of a global music company and the first woman to be named CEO of a major music publisher, Universal Music Publishing Group’s Jody
Gerson enjoys an unimpeachable pedigree. A music publisher for the entirety of her professional career, she presides over one of the world’s top publishing companies and has signed or works with a dazzling array of artists, including Adele, Bad Bunny, Justin Bieber, Lana Del Rey, Ariana Grande, Coldplay, Drake, Billie Eilish, Elton John, Alicia Keys, Kendrick Lamar, Post Malone, the Prince estate, Rosalia, Harry Styles, Taylor Swift, SZA, the Weeknd and many more.
On her watch, Taylor Swift joined UMPG (after Gerson lured her longtime publisher, Troy Tomlinson, into the fold) and Bob Dylan sold his publishing catalog to the company — in a deal reported to be between $300-$400 million — as did Neil Diamond and Sting.
Gerson leads a global company with 48 offices in 41 countries, with more than 850 employees; it owns and administers more than five million copyrights. She has tripled its revenue since she took the helm in 2015 — after increasingly successful roles at Warner Chappell, EMI and Sony Music Publishing — and her tenure has coincided with a sea change in the profile of the publishing industry, as more people and investors have realized the value of music and intellectual property.
She also oversees Polygram Entertainment, Universal Music Group’s film and television development and production division, and has served as executive producer of documentaries and projects on the Beach Boys, Stax Records, Tupac Shakur, Billy Preston, the Bee Gees, the 2002 drama “Drumline” and more. She is a co-founder of the female-empowerment music industry nonprofit She Is the Music and also is on the boards of Project Healthy Minds, Gap Inc. and Ancestry.com. She was honored with the prestigious Industry Icon Award at the Clive Davis Pre-Grammy Gala in 2025, and she even coined UMPG’s succinct new core-purpose statement: “Before it’s music, it’s a song.”
Perhaps most significantly to her, she has also mentored countless creatives and executives who speak glowingly of her contributions to their careers. The interview that follows is edited from a nearly two-hour conversation with Variety in early July.
Did anything in your background prepare you to run a global publishing company?
My dad and my grandfather had their own business — a nightclub called the Latin Casino in Cherry Hill, New Jersey — until it went bust. My mom was a stay-at-home mom until she had to get a job. I knew things were a little out of control in my house and I knew somebody had to be the grown-up, and it was going to be me. I was a very observant child: I observed how artists behaved backstage, how my father and my grandfather were with talent, I observed the maitre d’ at the dinner theater, where [your seat depended on] how much money you were greasing his palm. He didn’t even look down, but he knew if you gave him a hundred or if you gave him two dollars, and you were seated accordingly.
Who were some of the artists and how did they act?
Frank Sinatra, the Supremes, Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight, the O’Jays, Richard Pryor. When Frank Sinatra performed there, he would have dinner with a lot of people who came in from New York and New Jersey and Philadelphia, and I would watch them. I remember once a boyfriend had broken up with me and I was so upset, and my dad was like, “Frank, Jody’s boyfriend broke up with her.” Frank goes, “Listen, if anybody ever lays a hand on you, you call me. Don’t call your old man — you call me.” I remember Gladys Knight watching “Roots” when it came out before she went onstage and being mesmerized by it.
And they were different before the curtain went up — some people threw up, some people had [practice] routines — but they became bigger than life once the curtain went up. I saw the greatest entertainers of that time as a little girl. It gave me a love and respect for artists, and a comfort level.
And an understanding that most of us don’t have until later. You saw them at their most vulnerable.
Yes, and to your point, I’m very keyed in to mental health issues, although at the time I wouldn’t have articulated it as such — I thought it was just nerves, but it’s not. I think it goes hand in hand with artistry.
So it’s not like anybody taught me how to do anything — I observed. When I graduated from Northwestern, I wanted to work at MTV but there wasn’t a job for me, so I went around to the record companies. In those days, women got publicity jobs or promotion jobs — “I’m not doing that” — and randomly, I got an interview at Chappell Music.
I had never heard of music publishing, but I took the very entry-level job to move to New York, and I took advantage of every opportunity. If a songwriter needed a lyric sheet, instead of sending a messenger, I went myself with the hope that the songwriter would open the door and I could say, “Hi, I’m Jody Gerson.” I had respect for the guys who were in royalties and copyright, and I asked them what they did. I worked in the tape room, putting together all the songs that came in for the week so that the A&R people could listen to them, and then I would stay after hours and figure out how to match the song with the artist. I was really good at identifying songs and artists that would be popular, that’s why A&R was the first thing that I went after.
What was your first breakthrough?
Eventually, Chappell became Warner Chappell, I got out of the tape room and I was pitching songs. My first hit was “Straight to the Heart,” a song I pitched to Crystal Gayle that was written by Graham Lyle and Terry Britten, who also wrote Tina Turner’s smash “What’s Love Got to Do With It” and were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame this year. But when I went to EMI, and the first artist I signed was a band called Nelson [the sons of 1950s star Ricky Nelson, who had a multiplatinum debut album in 1990], but the one that really put me on the map was Arrested Development [an Atlanta-based alternative-hip-hop act who released a Grammy-winning multi-platinum debut album in 1992]. That led me to Jermaine Dupri, Dallas Austin, TLC, the whole Atlanta thing. And the beauty of what I got to do was — and is — that I wasn’t genre specific. I really learned how to be good at this with Dallas.
How so?
We just had an amazing connection. He wanted to work outside of Atlanta, so I took him to Europe for the first time, and he worked with Madonna, Bjork and Pink. He didn’t want to be pigeonholed, and I needed a vehicle to support my ambition. “How do I get into rooms?” I got into rooms because I had Dallas. And while he was in the studio, I was out there trying to figure out how to get him what he wanted. He said he wanted to produce a movie, and one day he told me a story about being in a high school marching band — and we actually produced a movie together: “Drumline” [the 2002 film that launched the careers of Zoe Saldaña and Nick Cannon]. And then we did “ATL” together, which helped launch T.I.
My career is in music publishing, but really it’s about how to support all the places a talented person wants to go with their career. And I knew that songs and songwriters would take me where I wanted to go, and I still say that today.
It sounds like you were very empowered by that stage of your career. Was [former EMI and Sony Music Publishing chief] Marty Bandier the kind of boss who could see that you knew what you were doing and let you do it?
Marty was spectacular, but he didn’t just leave me alone — he was very engaged in the whole thing, and he taught me how to do this from a business point of view. When I got my job at EMI, I had no idea how to make a deal. I had to study it — I would go through deals with him and ask the right questions — and he was very generous with me and taught me a lot, but he also trusted that I had an instinct that something was good, and he would help me figure out how to make the deal make sense.
Were there many other female publishers at the time?
Well, the ones that came before me were Nancy Brennan [of EMI and CBS] and Deirdre O’Hara [at EMI, Sony/ATV and BMG], but there were not a lot of women. It took me a long time to really have a sisterhood, which is something I think is really important for women in our business. I was never comfortable in the boys’ club — I wanted to create my own club. And publishing was a proper business. It was very different from the record business.
Remember, at the time, publishing was so passive. We weren’t on the front line. If we got one synch, it was enough. We weren’t as involved creatively, but I took that as an opportunity to get close to talent: “Forget that I’m your music publisher. How can I support you? What else do you want to do? And how can I use my circle and my contacts to help you get there?”
There’s so much more we can do now — sync opportunities and writing for film and television. When I signed Rosalia, she walked into my office and I was like, oh my God — I know a superstar when I see one. I was able to introduce her to all kinds of people. She’d spent time [in the U.S.], but she’s from Spain —how can I help her acclimate? Whether it’s going to a Pilates class or setting her up with a vocal coach —that’s not what a publisher does, but I did it.
You represent two groups of people that are effectively minorities in music: women and songwriters. Women first: How have you handled the sexism that you’ve inevitably encountered throughout your career?
I powered through. I don’t want to be a guy. I’d only had male bosses; I never had a female boss and I didn’t have a female mentor. And when I started, women didn’t necessarily help each other.
But when I took this job, I decided I was going to be me — as a mother of three, as someone who wanted to support the ambition of our employees. So I surround myself with incredible executive talent and I run a meritocracy. My head of Latam is a woman: Alexandra Lioutikoff. Talk about an area that’s hard! I just hired a head of Asia, Sunita Kaur.
I am conscious of women being successful and I am conscious of the fact that men have been at this longer than we have. That’s why I committed to She Is the Music: We have to want each other to be successful. It’s very, very important that women support other women. I came up saying “I got this — I can raise three children, run a house, run a company, take my kids to school, get dinner on the table,” all of that. But it’s insanely crazy-making and not the right way to do it. The right way is to have connectivity with other women.
When I took this job, I said, “Yay, I’m the first.” But if when I’m done, I’m still the only one, I will not have been successful.
And yet, the number of C-suite female music executives keeps falling.
So let’s change that. I don’t want to be negative. It’s very important to me to be hopeful — not in a Pollyanna kind of way, but we have to take responsibility for each other and move each other forward, give each other opportunities and be honest with one another. It’s us who’s going to get us there.
I’ve known since I was a little girl that I had power, but how did I deal with a male-dominated business? I did it by making myself small. I made my boss big, I made my artists big, but I was small. And it took me a really long time to stand in my power. I don’t think this generation of women is making themselves small.
When [Grammy chief] Harvey Mason called me about being honored [with the Industry Icon Award at the Clive Davis Pre-Grammy Gala in 2025], I was like, wait, what, me? Can I call you back? Can I think about it? I don’t even know why I had that reaction.
But I had to write a speech, and it was the greatest therapy I’ve ever had. Because the first drafts said “Thank you to every single person who I’ve met in my career, every single executive I work with. Thank you, thank all of you.” And by draft four or five, my partner Gavin said, “Would you consider making one speech where you’re not thanking everyone? Everybody knows you appreciate them — you do it in every speech. Can you consider yourself in this one?”
It was a fundamental change for me to look at my own career. Because I do think one of the qualities of being a woman and surviving was making myself small. And I didn’t shrink for that speech.
Songwriters are literally at the bottom of the streaming economy — streaming royalties are approximately 75% to recorded music and 25% to publishing. Why is that? What can we do about it?
OK, let me give you a positive first. In the days when we were buying records, there were 10 songs on an album, and we paid $9.99. We could listen to that album over and over and over, and it was only ever going to be worth $9.99. Now, every time a song is streamed, there is revenue, and no matter what form that song is in — whether it’s somebody performing it on “American Idol” or a cover or [user-generated content] or any version of a song — there is an opportunity to get paid. So it’s not all horror, and I think we’re getting there. I do.
But it’s hard. I think so much of music publishing … you know, the fact that we have to spend a fortune on the CRB [Copyright Royalty Board, the government organization that determines royalty rates], and wouldn’t it be nice if the platforms respected songwriters? [National Music Publishers Assn. president-CEO] David Israelite fights a good fight on behalf of all of music publishers, I think.
I also have this other challenge now, which is how do people consume music? They’re consuming it on TikTok, social media, music-branded content, ba, ba, ba. I have to make it easier for music to be licensed. YouTube loves to promote their creator economy, and I love to promote our songwriter economy, but in order to do that, I have to find an industry solution to make licensing easier.
But what I didn’t know when I took this job was how much of my day would be spent fighting for the value of a song. Can you believe that so much of my job is about getting people to pay for the music that they use?
You’ve done or observed the job of almost every single person in a publishing company. How do you stay out of the weeds and just let your staff do their thing, even if it’s not exactly the way you would do it?
I’m a really good delegator, although I think I’m harder on my A&R team. I get pangs — like when [head of U.S. A&R] Jenn Knoepfle brings in an artist that I wish I had brought in, I get a pang, like, Oh, I used to just do that. I don’t get a pang when my CFO is working on P&L [laughter]. But when you want your team to be successful, you have to let them succeed.
Also, I run a global business. Do you think that I can micromanage my guy in France or Germany? [Chief operating officer] Mark Cimino has certain responsibilities, so do JW [Beekman, CFO for UMPG], [head of global A&R] David Gray, [chief counsel] David Kokakis and Jenn [Knoepfle], and they’re so good. Publishing is so complicated and so big that I couldn’t do it myself. It wouldn’t be fair to songwriters.
You didn’t sign Kendrick Lamar the first time you went after him, but you got him later. Do you have a philosophy to leave the door open?
I very, very rarely close the door. And the thing with Kendrick was not getting the deal the first time — I remember calling [Lamar’s then-manager Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith] and saying, “OK, I’m going to do it,” and he said, “Jody, we just closed [with another publisher].” But I was determined that as soon as that deal was available again, I was going to get it. And that was the beginning of my relationship with Top Dawg. I stayed on him, and that’s why he brought me SZA and Doechii and Kendrick when Kendrick became available. Because first and foremost, we’re in a relationship business. I played a very long game, obviously.
Speaking of long games, how has the catalog gold rush changed your job?
It’s changed it a lot — a lot. I’m in the artist business; I’m not in the deal business. And even when it comes to acquisition, my job is to create as much value for that catalog as I possibly can. And if they decide to sell, hopefully they’ll sell to me, but it’s up to them — I’m not pounding on anybody’s door to buy.
But isn’t it amazing that private equity believes in the value of songs? I think that having songs as an asset class is a great thing, because it’s to pay songwriters what their songs are worth. And I think that anybody who buys [a catalog] should secure their purchase by having our world-class administration take care of their music.
You’ve tripled revenue in the last 11 years. What did you change about the culture in order to make that happen?
I bet on talent. Universal Music Publishing was a successful company. They hit their numbers, but they weren’t a thriving creative force. They were risk-averse, so they didn’t bet on new talent. And I encouraged people all over the world to sign the best talent and take risks with them. At the same time, we already had a world-class global admin system, so the combination of great global admin, becoming the definitive admin company for the film and TV companies and investing in great talent — that’s how we did it. And again, reminding every single person who works here that they have an important job, and that job is to change a songwriter’s life.
Finally, what does this honor mean to you?
Being a mogul isn’t about what I’ve accumulated. To me, it means being in a position to make a meaningful difference and have a more expansive reach. It’s about using my platform at UMPG to create opportunities for amazing people and to connect them with one another. It means fighting for songwriters, supporting women in music, advocating for mental health, and helping guide organizations outside our industry. If you’re fortunate enough to have that kind of influence, I believe you have a responsibility to use it well.
That’s why I’m committed to organizations like She Is The Music, Project Healthy Minds and others. Each gives me the opportunity to contribute in meaningful ways while exposing me to new perspectives and approaches that I can bring back to UMPG. Those experiences make me a better leader and expand the impact I have beyond our own industry.
