76 BILLBOARD • DATE TK, 2019 PHOTOGRAPHY BY NAMEHERE TEEKAY
THE SOUND
76 BILLBOARD • SEPTEMBER 21, 2019
THE MARKET
● Atlas Music Publishing entered a joint venture with QUINCY JONES and his Quincy Jones Productions. ● Sony/ATV extended its global publishing deal with BOI-1DA.
T
HE DAY AFTER DEBORAH DUGAN
moved from New York to Los Angeles
with her three children, 91-year-old
mother and their dog, Sandy, to
become The Recording Academy’s
first female chief executive, Southern California
experienced a 6.4-magnitude earthquake, followed
two days later by a 7.1-magnitude quake. “I knew I
was going to shake things up,” she says with a laugh.
Six weeks after her Aug. 1 start date, Dugan
deliberately has not made any seismic changes to
the organization that Neil Portnow led for the past
17 years. Instead, she’s doing a lot of listening in a
near-constant flow of meetings with new Recording
Academy board chair Harvey Mason Jr., her staff,
artists and managers, plus trying “to figure out the
phone system” at The Recording Academy’s Santa
Monica, Calif., offices.
Dugan arrives with a résumé that includes the
skills she’ll need to lead the operations of the
22,000-member Recording Academy, which in-
cludes overseeing the Grammy Awards, MusiCares
and various advocacy initiatives, as well as serving
on the boards of the Grammy Museum Foundation
and The Latin Recording Academy. The Long Island
native is a former Wall Street mergers and acquisi-
tions attorney who worked as executive vp of EMI
Records Group/Angel Records in the 1990s before
becoming president of Disney Publishing World-
wide. She most recently served as CEO of (RED), the
AIDS nonprofit that U2’s Bono and activist Bobby
Shriver co-founded in 2006. Dugan is also co-chair
of the storytelling nonprofit The Moth.
She inherits a Recording Academy that grew un-
der Portnow, both in membership and financially, but
also has been accused of being a “boys club” sorely
lacking in gender and racial diversity, especially
when it comes to Grammy voters, and has to deal
with a ratings decline that has affected awards shows
across the board.
In her first interview as president/CEO, Dugan
lays out her plans for the 62-year-old organization,
with culture change on the agenda. “It’s our task to
ensure that membership is diverse, representative of
the creative music community, all genres, genders,
voices,” she says. “And that that group can become
activists for their rights. If we give them the tools to
do that, it’s going to change the world for the better.”
You had been leading (RED) for
almost a decade. What about this
position appealed to you?
I was approached by a recruiter, and
at first, I thought, “Do I really want
to disrupt my life?” I was very happy
as CEO of (RED) [and] with my loft
in the West Village. I’ve been 35
years in New York City. I have three
kids in school and wasn’t looking to
make a move. This is probably the
only other job I would have taken. I
love music. I look for places where
I could make maximum impact, and
I knew that I could do that at The
Recording Academy.
You have had a tremendously
diverse career. What has prepared
you for this opportunity?
My whole leadership style is about
unheard voices and storytelling.
A lot of that came from disrupting
philanthropy with (RED). But there,
FROM THE DESK OF
DEBORAH
DUGAN
President/CEO
The Recording Academy
BY MELINDA NEWMAN
PHOTOGRAPHED BY
AMANDA FRIEDMAN
“I’m taking
the time to
listen and to
be very sure,”
says Dugan,
photographed
Sept. 11 at The
Recording
Academy in
Santa Monica,
Calif.