“Geo is one of the most inspiring women I have ever met: hard worker, positive, eager to connect people and projects, creative, a culture and technology lover, but above all what fascinates me is her desire to create a new path for new generations through art and positive values” were the words spoken as music composer, DJ and Creative Cora Novoa handed the Keychange Inspiration Award to Georgia Taglietti at BIME Festival in Bilbao.

The Director of the Barcelona branch of shesaid.so and Communications & Digital Director, Head of International Media at Sónar Music Festival, Georgia has made an indelible mark on the music industry throughout her career, making her a truly worthy recipient of this award which honours and celebrates female pioneers who have made an extraordinary contribution to music.

Georgia joins us to tell us more about key lessons learnt throughout her journey so far, as well as her hopes and ambitions for women and the future of the music industry.

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Music was never supposed to be my job. It was supposed to be fun. I always had a very emotional relationship with music, and especially with jazz. But I was also attracted to the backstage areas, the work behind the entertainment. I got into the music business casually and I never looked back. I built my career together with three men, the Sónar festival founders, to whom I owe what I am today. I am also conscious that what I am today, particularly in the last 4 years, is also partly thanks to Andreea Magdalina, who founded shesaid.so.

I am currently the Head of Communication of a successful festival, for which I have worked over the past 25 years, which does not mean I am not multitasking in lots of other departments. Music is not about specialisation, it’s about using all your cultural and practical skills. During all these years, I have covered almost every area except performing, and I love to be able to feel that I learn more than my role will ever need. Life is a never-ending process of learning.

With shesaid.so, since I am part of this outstanding, unique and growing women in a music network, I learned other skills which have led me to a personal discovery, beyond where any task could have led me. I learned that I have a lot to give back, that there is a network out there in need of hearing of what I have learnt, and sharing experiences, knowledge, ethics and beliefs. I also found that there was a feeling growing inside of me that I wasn’t really paying attention to, and that feeling was related to the fact that I am a woman in the business, with some terrible learnt habits of keeping everything in an internal monologue with myself (as so many of us do). This is how the music business was in the past. Now, I can’t stop conversing and networking with women around the world that are, in a way, my “sisters in crime”. I never had a sister. I grew up among men, and I did not really understand my mother growing up. And now all has fallen into place.

The XXI Century is the century I want to live in. Technology has allowed me to get in touch with anyone around the world. It has allowed Andreea to create the shesaidso Google group, which connects more than 3000 fellow women in the music business. It has allowed us to create more than 15 local groups on Facebook and Instagram, which total more than 10,000 colleagues. Quantity means a lot, as the diversity of it allows us to understand which are the challenges and the issues to tackle and discuss in different countries, cities or events.

Joining the group has been a game changer and I became not only a woman in the business, but a mentor, a role model and a working hand, complete with all the responsibilities that this requires. I am now, at 52, able to assume those responsibilities and face the future by passing along my experience, trying to make the next path smoother, quicker and easier using the best of my abilities as a communicator. Young girls in the business have more resources, but they could encounter the same boundaries. It’s up for us, the older generation, to help them jump to the next level. So to give you an idea in pictures, I am the hand that helps the feet to overcome this huge, almost unbreakable wall that I feel is finally about to fall down. I hope to be “the mother of dragons”.

Thanks Vanessa Reed and PRS Foundation for this incredible honour, and to offer me this space to put my thoughts into words and for your award, which I wish to share with all the women that helped me get here, you know who you are.

– Georgia Taglietti