The BIG Summit Speaker Biographies

Kim Beauchamp

DDEX Chair and SVP Process Innovation & Advanced Operations, Universal Music Group

Kim is Senior Vice President, Process Innovation and Advanced Operations for Universal Music Group. Kim oversees the Process Innovation, Advanced Operations, and Metadata Modeling and Standard areas.

She focuses on transforming the existing business models and creating new business processes to supporting the new business models in which UMG is engaging. She designs operational workflows to integrate new business models and complex edge cases in the traditional business models. She also oversees Metadata Modeling & Standards, where she investigates root causes for bad or incomplete data throughout the value chain and oversees the creation of the company’s global metadata standards. Kim has worked for UMG since 1998, beginning her career within their IT department. She has helped design and develop numerous systems that are critical to the company’s operations, including the digital scheduling system, the asset management and content delivery system, and the company’s global label copy system. She continues to actively work to reimagine the company’s internal tool set and processes to support the ever-changing business.

Susan Butler

Executive Editor/Publisher, Music Confidential

Susan Butler is a business journalist and publisher, former-practicing entertainment and technology attorney and published author. Through her Butler Business & Media LLC, she writes and publishes the weekly international news and analysis report Music Confidential and produces a few select private executive summits. Many CEOs and government officials call Susan “the most influential commentator” and “the most knowledgeable expert on music matters in our industry” and refer to Music Confidential as “the holy grail of music [business] resources,” which quickly became “the point of reference” for executives and government officials and advisors in 48 countries. After practicing law for 21 years, she began reporting and writing full-time, achieving a number of “firsts” for an entertainment industry business journalist including acquiring confidential financial information on multi-billion-dollar acquisitions and confidential antitrust decisions; securing exclusive in-person interviews with high-level government officials including U.S. Attorneys General, Chinese Chief of Ministry of Culture (Audio and Video), French government officials, White House officials and a European Commissioner; joining New York Police Department undercover detectives and MPAA and RIAA investigators on a bust of an illegal CD and DVD replication facility. During Susan’s legal career, she served as an elected member of the boards of The Recording Academy (the Grammy Award organisation) Los Angeles and New York Chapters, and her legal clients included individuals and companies in the music, film, TV and tech fields internationally.

Mark Douglas

Chief Information Officer, PPL

Mark is the Chief Information Officer at PPL and DDEX board member. As a member of PPL’s Executive Management team, he is responsible for all aspects of PPL’s technology and data infrastructure. He leads a team of around 50 IT and data professionals developing and maintaining PPL’s technology systems. Outside PPL’s core systems, Mark has played a key role in a range of critical industry initiatives including RDx, the recording repertoire data exchange, and VRDB the SCAPR database to improve the flow of cross border payments between performer collecting societies.

Prior to joining PPL in 2011, Mark was a partner in the technology consulting practice at Deloitte where he served a broad range of media clients across TV, music and film. Prior to that, he was the head of Commercial Systems Development at Sky Television and was part of the team that launched pay-per-view and Digital TV services in the UK. As a Chartered Accountant and Computer Science graduate, Mark draws on a broad range of business and technology experience. Mark has recently become a regular contributor to Music Business Worldwide’s UK print magazine, where he comments on data and technology matters within the music industry.

Harmen Hemminga

Head of Partnerships and Strategic Projects, FUGA

Harmen Hemminga is the Head of Partnerships and Strategic Projects, overseeing FUGA’s licensing, catalog development and partnerships efforts. Having started his career as an agent and working in artist management, working closely with creators across the globe, he has set up ID&T / Headliner Entertainment’s label and publishing division before joining FUGA.
 
 
 
 

Cécile Rap-Veber

Chief Executive Officer, Sacem

Cécile Rap-Veber holds a master’s degree in contract law and private international law and a certificate of aptitude for the legal profession (Capa) from the Paris Bar.

A lawyer at the Paris Court of Appeals, she joined Universal Music France in 2000, where she was Director of Legal & Business Affairs, then Director of Universal Music Consulting & Content (UMCC) until 2013.

She joined Sacem in 2013 as Director of Licensing and a member of the Executive Committee. In 2016, her responsibilities were extended to International, in 2019 to Operations and in 2020 to Development.

In these various roles, she was in charge of negotiation and collections relating to media, phonographic and videographic formats, digital exploitation, private copying and international. She oversaw the management of Sacem’s repertoire and the distribution of the royalties collected for the exploitation of works in Sacem’s repertoire in France and abroad. She was also responsible for the development and management of online mandates entrusted to Sacem by British and American publishers, including UMPG, Wixen, Warner Chappell, Impel, Wise Music, and initiated and supervised the deployment of the global digital data processing and BI platform known as URights.

Cécile Rap-Veber is also CEO of the Society for the Administration of Mechanical Reproduction Rights (SDRM). She is Vice-President of the Board of Directors of Copie France and a member of the board of Directors of the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC), and of the Centre national de la musique (CNM).

Victoria Campoamor

Senior Director, Content Operations & Services, Spotify

Victoria has over 25 years of experience in the publishing industry. In her current role as Senior Director of Content Operations and Services at Spotify, she’s responsible for leading strategic change in publishing operations and managing relationships with publishing licensors globally. Before Spotify, Victoria worked at Google, first as Head of Google Play’s publishing licensing in EMEA, then leading YouTube’s global publishing strategy.

Prior to working on the DSP side of the industry, Victoria spent many years working at Collecting Societies, first at SGAE, in her native Spain, then at PRS, where she served as Director of Operations and IT. She holds a masters degree in Economics and Business from the University of Oviedo, Spain.

Greg Quillard

Director of Music Publishing Operations, YouTube

Greg Quillard is the Director of Music Publishing Operations at YouTube. In 2002, he obtained a double Master of Science degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Supélec Engineering School in Paris and Georgia Tech University in Atlanta, Georgia.

He started his career as a software architect in a mid-size consulting company in Paris (Solucom). In 2005, he joined the French tech start-up Mappy as Principal Sales Engineer, and was later hired by Google in 2008 as Sales Engineer, in charge of operational and technical aspects of YouTube and Google partnerships, where he negotiated and launched hundreds of agreements with European record labels who wanted to expand their presence and revenue on YouTube.

In 2012, he took over technical relationships between YouTube and publishing licensors, and led the technical redefinition of dozens of publishing agreements in the context of direct and multi territorial licensing. Over the years, he built a team of technical and operation experts supporting collection societies & music publishers globally.
 

Amy Thompson

Chief Catalog Officer, Hipgnosis

Amy Thomson is the Chief Catalog Officer for Hipgnosis covering both the Public Fund (Song) a FTSE 250 Company on the London Stock Exchange and the new Blackstone investment venture announced in 2021. Her role includes overseeing all self administered catalogs of the Fund worldwide and is the London liason for all Hipgnosis Songs Group (formally Big Deal Publishing) who administer the USA rights of catalogs which have reverted into the care of the Fund.

Her role follows a 25 year career in management with Artists like Swedish House Mafia, DJ Snake and Seal achieving over 14 billion streams. Thomson also sits on the Board of Session for Bjorn Ulvaeus a technology to assist the next generation in delivering data with the 5 key identifiers already attached in an effort to begin to clean the data mess the music industry sits in.

Kris Ahrend

Chief Executive Officer, Mechanical Licensing Collective (The MLC)

Kris Ahrend is the Chief Executive Officer of The MLC, where he leads the organization in its mission to ensure songwriters, composers, lyricists, and music publishers receive their mechanical royalties from streaming and download services in the U.S. accurately and on time. Under his direction, The MLC has already distributed hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties to its Members since officially beginning operations in 2021.

Before joining The MLC, Kris served as the President of U.S. Shared Services for Warner Music Group (WMG), where he led the development and launch of WMG’s Center of Excellence for Shared Services in Nashville and oversaw the operations of fifteen different functional teams providing a variety of administrative, financial, and legal services to WMG’s U.S.-based publishing teams, record labels, and corporate divisions. Prior to launching the Center of Excellence, Ahrend served as the Head of Business & Legal Affairs for WMG’s catalog label, Rhino Records, in Los Angeles, and then led a large legal, financial, and administrative shared services organization within WMG that he helped to create. Kris started working in the music industry in New York City, where he held positions in the Law Department at Sony Music and then the Business and Legal Affairs Department at Sony BMG Music Entertainment.

A graduate of Binghamton University in New York and the Washington & Lee School of Law, Kris began his legal career as a law clerk in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He then spent several years in private practice, working in the New York office of the international law firm, Simpson Thacher.

Ahrend is a respected and recognized leader in the music industry. He was named to Billboard magazine’s 2022 Power List, and he also received an Indie Spirit Award in 2021 from The Association of Independent Music Publishers (AIMP) in recognition of his contributions to independent music publishing community.

Ellen Truley

Chief Marketing Officer, Mechanical Licensing Collective (The MLC)

Ellen Truley serves as Chief Marketing Officer for The Mechanical Licensing Collective (The MLC), where she leverages her wealth of experience in marketing, brand strategy, digital initiatives, advertising and public relations to direct a robust and proactive communications operation that engages both the music community and the public at large. Among her numerous responsibilities, Truley leads The MLC’s widespread efforts to identify, engage and educate prospective members through dedicated MLC programs and partnerships with key music industry groups and oversees the execution of numerous marketing campaigns for the organization that focus on increasing membership, stressing the importance of data accuracy and more.

Prior to joining The MLC, Truley was the founder and CEO of ETC Consulting, a leading music industry marketing firm focused in the entertainment relations niche consulting with music, tech and entertainment companies in New York, Nashville, Los Angeles and London. Truley previously served as the Senior Vice President of Corporate Relations for SESAC Holdings, Inc. for 20 years, leading global marketing initiatives for all corporate entities and elevating the organization’s brand through collaborations with industry partners and advertisers. She also spearheaded the development, strategy and execution of SESAC’s numerous partnerships, while overseeing its participation in countless songwriter showcases and festivals and serving as the executive producer for all SESAC productions.

Truly has been named one of Billboard Magazine’s Women in Music on numerous occasions and honored at the Nashville Business Journal’s Women in Music City Awards for several years as well. She currently serves on the Global Board of Women in Music and is a member of the Leadership Music class of 2022. Truley has also served on the Library of Congress’ National Recording Preservation Board and as a mentor for Belmont University. Truly is also a member of NARAS, CMA and ACM.