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Inside October: Women Pushing Entertainment

October 15, 2019

2 Min Read

This month we’re going behind the scenes to see the women who are pushing entertainment boundaries. As the Internet continues to level the playing field, we’re seeing how women are crafting careers with the dawn of new digital storytelling, the ever-expanding boundaries of television and more.

Kim L. Clark talks to Kayo Washio, the head of U.S. operations for Wowow, Japan’s version of HBO. No stranger to hard work, Washio says she had to build a strong network from scratch when relocating to the U.S. “Being from Japan, I had no connections or relationships to leverage when I first came to the U.S., so I’ve had to really build my network from the ground up … The entertainment industry is built around trust. Knowing yourself and staying true to who you are is the best thing you can do for yourself as you move along your career path.”

She’s not alone when it comes to the importance of trust. Music artists are trusting entrepreneur Jessica Sobhraj, founder and CEO of Cosynd, to help fight for what is rightfully theirs. A longtime music industry vet, her fight to help artists halt copyright infringement was born out of their cries for help. She told Lioness reporter Tara McCollum, “I was representing millions of songs for placement in TV, film, advertising, and gaming and so a common thing that I would come across [was] just so many artists who would say to us, ‘Hey, we actually have a hard time documenting who owns our copyrights,” said Sobhraj. “After digging a little bit further, they would say, ‘look we just have just never taken the time to do this paperwork because we think it just costs too much money.’ Having been in this industry for over 10 years but seeing this happen over and over and over again, which by the way, ripples throughout the entire media industry, I kind of took it upon myself to have that entrepreneur’s moment.”

Her work at Cosynd is right on time as she gets behind the CASE Act, which Congress is currently trying to push through.

Stick with us this month as we bring you the work of women pushing entertainment — film, music, podcasts — we’re looking at them all. So stay awhile, click around and tell another female founder to join you.

Until next time …

Rock your day,

About the author

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Natasha Zena

Around age eight Natasha Zena was told it was a woman’s job to take care of the home and since then she has built a career out of telling women they can do whatever the hell they want to do. She is the co-founder of Lioness, the go-to news source for everything female entrepreneur. Natasha was recognized as an emerging leader in digital media by The Poynter Institute and the National Association of Black Journalists. She has mentored women entrepreneurs and moderated panels at a number of national accelerators, Startup Weekends and conferences such as The Lean Startup Conference, the Massachusetts Conference for Women, Women Empower Expo and Smart Cities Connect. Natasha is also the author of the popular whitepaper, "How To Close The Gender Gap In Startup Land By 2021." In her spare time, she writes short fiction and hangs out with her son, Shaun.