04/24/2026
Saturday was UC Santa Barbara's 10th Annual Women in Media Conference. I'm deeply honored to have been on the Music Panel with Aura Harewood (Interscope Records), Melyssa Hardwick ( ), and Tyla Jones (Total Accord Agency), moderated by fellow Filipina Ella Herring from the WIM exec board.
The threads I keep coming back to are authenticity and community. They turn out to be the same thread: trust your own voice, and find the people who'll show up for it. I felt that in every panelist's story. Aura on staying true to her passion early on by running a successful music blog. Tyla on moving from a nonprofit role to build her own booking agency for the Bay Area music community. Melyssa on choosing to run her own music supervision company after years at a major label. Different scales, same shape: choose yourself, and the universe starts to align around that conviction.
I felt it just as much between panels, talking with one young woman torn between medicine and music. She told me she felt lighter after we talked through it: following two passions that don't usually combine is how you end up doing work no one else can do.
Talking with Melyssa after the panel, we both said the same thing: we didn't have this when we were students. Ten years of UCSB Women in Media. A room full of college students. A panel of women who had each built their own thing. I'm so grateful this exists. The next generation gets to start with a different baseline.
Looking at the bigger picture, there's been a growing debate about AI taking over the media and entertainment industry. Moments like this, being in a conference with these amazing panelists and amazing young students at UCSB, are a living testament to the opposite. AI can replicate a lot, but it cannot replicate community, humanity, connection, or human expertise. The intuition that comes from years of lived experience isn't in any textbook. That was the room on Saturday, and it was such a privilege to be in it.
Special thanks to Serenity, Kendra, Mahek, Ella, and the WIM UCSB exec board for months of organizing behind this conference. The future of media and entertainment is bright with these young women leading the way.
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