How four influential women are redefining music ownership, protecting legendary catalogs, and helping shape the financial future of entertainment
The music industry has always celebrated the artists who dominate the charts, sell out arenas, and create timeless records. However, behind some of the world’s most valuable music catalogs, a different group of power players is transforming the business of entertainment.
Four influential women, Golnar Khosrowshahi, Lylette Pizarro McLean, Sherrese Clarke Soares, and Jessica Koravos, are helping redefine what leadership looks like in an industry historically dominated by men.
Collectively, their companies are associated with billions of dollars in music investments, intellectual property, and entertainment assets. Their influence extends across publishing, catalog acquisitions, financial investments, and the preservation of legendary musical legacies.
Their work demonstrates an increasingly important reality: women are playing a significant role in determining who owns music, how it is monetized, and how its cultural legacy is preserved.
Golnar Khosrowshahi: Building a Global Music Powerhouse
As the founder and CEO of Reservoir Media, Golnar Khosrowshahi has established herself as one of the most influential executives in independent music publishing. Reservoir has developed an extensive portfolio of music publishing rights, recorded music assets, and catalogs spanning generations and genres. Its interests include works associated with legendary artists and influential contemporary creators.
Khosrowshahi’s approach demonstrates that music ownership extends far beyond purchasing popular songs. It involves identifying intellectual property with lasting cultural significance, developing new revenue opportunities, and ensuring that valuable compositions continue reaching audiences worldwide. Her leadership also represents an important milestone for women navigating the financial and corporate structures of the global music business.
Lylette Pizarro McLean: Connecting Culture and Capital
Lylette Pizarro McLean, founder of Influence Media Partners, represents a generation of entertainment executives combining creative expertise with sophisticated investment strategies. Influence Media Partners focuses on investing in music rights and partnering with artists, songwriters, and other creators whose work has demonstrated lasting commercial and cultural value.
The company’s investment strategy reflects the growing recognition that music catalogs are not simply collections of recordings. They are valuable intellectual property assets capable of generating revenue through streaming, film, television, advertising, licensing, and emerging digital platforms. Pizarro McLean’s leadership illustrates how relationships, cultural understanding, and financial resources can work together to build meaningful partnerships with creators.
Sherrese Clarke Soares: Transforming Entertainment Investment
As the founder and CEO of HarbourView Equity Partners, Sherrese Clarke Soares has emerged as a formidable figure in entertainment finance.
HarbourView operates at the intersection of investment management, intellectual property, and media ownership, pursuing opportunities involving music and other entertainment assets. Clarke Soares’s work reflects a broader transformation in how institutional investors evaluate creative intellectual property. Music catalogs that were once viewed primarily as artistic achievements are increasingly recognized as long-term financial assets with multiple sources of potential income.
Her leadership also highlights the importance of expanding access to capital and ownership opportunities within an industry where the creators of cultural value have not always controlled its financial rewards.
Jessica Koravos: Managing Entertainment’s Global Legacy
Jessica Koravos, a senior executive at Pophouse Entertainment, brings extensive experience in entertainment, intellectual property, and international business. Pophouse has attracted considerable attention for its approach to acquiring, developing, and reimagining entertainment brands and music catalogs. The company has been associated with major entertainment properties, including the legendary rock band KISS, demonstrating how established music brands can generate new opportunities through immersive experiences, productions, licensing, and other forms of commercial development.
Koravos’s work reflects an increasingly important reality: the future of music ownership is not limited to collecting royalties. It also involves finding innovative ways to introduce iconic artists and their creative legacies to new generations.
The Billion-Dollar Business of Music Ownership
The growing influence of these four executives comes during a period of extraordinary transformation in the global music business. Streaming has changed how consumers access music, while investment firms, publishers, and entertainment companies have increasingly recognized the long-term financial potential of music rights. A successful catalog can generate income for decades through streaming royalties, synchronization licensing, public performances, sampling, merchandise, and other commercial opportunities.
For artists and their estates, selecting the right business partners can be one of the most consequential financial decisions of their careers. The companies that acquire or manage these rights may influence how music is distributed, marketed, licensed, and preserved long after its original release. This makes trust, industry knowledge, creative vision, and responsible stewardship just as important as financial resources.
More Than Representation: The Power of Ownership
For decades, conversations about women in entertainment have frequently centered on performers, executives, and representation within record labels. However, the achievements of Khosrowshahi, Pizarro McLean, Clarke Soares, and Koravos point toward something even more significant.
Women are not simply participating in the music industry. They are helping control the assets that power it.
Their influence reaches beyond executive offices and corporate boardrooms into the financial structures that determine how music generates wealth. They are participating in decisions involving catalog acquisitions, investment partnerships, intellectual property management, and the future commercial development of some of entertainment’s most recognizable creative works. Their accomplishments also offer an important lesson for emerging artists, producers, songwriters, and entrepreneurs: understanding ownership can be just as valuable as understanding the creative process.
The Future Belongs to Those Who Own the Music
As music continues to evolve through technology, artificial intelligence, digital distribution, and new entertainment experiences, intellectual property ownership will remain central to the industry’s financial future. The executives positioning themselves at the forefront of this transformation are not merely responding to industry trends. They are helping establish the business models that could define the next generation of entertainment.
Golnar Khosrowshahi, Lylette Pizarro McLean, Sherrese Clarke Soares, and Jessica Koravos represent four distinct leadership journeys connected by a powerful common thread: the recognition that music is both a cultural treasure and a valuable economic asset. Their success is a reminder that some of the most influential people in music may never step onto a concert stage or stand behind a microphone. Instead, they are negotiating the deals, managing the investments, developing the partnerships, and protecting the intellectual property that keeps the music business moving forward.
The artists create the music. The visionaries help protect its legacy. And increasingly, women are leading the business of ownership.
