Name: Gabriela Martinez
Company: Warner Music Latin America
Role Title: SVP of Marketing, Warner Music - Latin America
Headquarters: Miami
Website: wmg.com
VALUES
Tell me about the values that inform your approach in what you do?
Loyalty. Teamwork. Ambition. Family.
FUTURE
From your perspective, what are the issues facing the music business in 2015?
I have thought a lot about this, and I would like to speak about the importance of mentoring. We work in a very fast industry, everything is moving so fast. There are so many phone calls and meetings and projects and it is hard to make everything a priority. I want to ask that we find the time for mentoring. We must address this. We must transfer our skills to the next generation and the one after that. You cannot learn these specialist skills in college.
What do you mean by that?
This is the challenge we face. How do we ensure we take the time to nurture our executives? This is a business that has a lot to do with feelings. Emotion, art, creativity and instinct. In music you can have insight and data, but you cannot learn everything from data analysis. These two things must go hand in hand. Understanding the feeling and then understanding the analysis. We must teach our executives the important lessons of how they can develop and how to do important things like communicate and listen.
Learning our way of being with each other is definitely something that comes with insight and experience. How do we pass those skills on?
By teaching. Sometimes yes we learn from mistakes or experience. But what I’m talking about is the art of teaching. Sitting with another executive or with a coach and working through examples. Understanding process, approach, structure and direction of the self. Making that connection and then growing and learning and teaching. I would like to see us develop structures for personal connection and planned education within our music label world. Everything is always more work and requires more time no? I understand that, but I am talking about investment in education.
Let’s talk about an example for how we could approach this. How could one drive this idea?
We could perhaps look at designing a program for a day per quarter. We bring together the group, of all sides of experience and background, and we talk. We bring together our ideas, our questions, or lessons and our challenges and we work through them. We help to create a discussion within a creative and nurturing environment. No fear. We inspire and incentivize ways to learn and help each other.
*Photography by Andrew Urban