Women in Music x Soho House
Project Overview
Women in Music x Soho House is a global event platform spanning Nashville, Amsterdam, and New York City. Presented by Channing & Company, the series combined brand partnerships, experiential marketing, cultural programming, and hospitality to celebrate the women shaping sound and shifting culture through music.
Building a Global Event Platform Through Brand Partnerships, Experiential Marketing, and Programming
Women in Music—a celebration of the women shaping sound and shifting culture through music.
Women in Music is a global event platform created and presented by Channing & Company in partnership with Soho House. Through brand partnerships, experiential marketing, cultural programming, creative direction, and hospitality, the series brought influential women working across the music industry into an intimate forum designed for candid conversation and meaningful connection.
Across four editions, Women in Music convened executives behind major artist campaigns and live cultural moments alongside senior leaders from Amazon Music, Spotify, Columbia Records, Epic Records, Def Jam Recordings, Republic Records, Sony Music, EMPIRE, COLORS Studios, and independent ventures spanning publishing, artist management, creativity, and culture.
The power was in the room—and the room was part of the experience. Panels flowed into dinners, mixers, after-parties, and international DJ sets, allowing conversations to continue around the table and throughout the House.
The series traveled through Soho House’s international network from Nashville to Amsterdam and Ludlow House in New York City before returning to Nashville for a special Tech Edition. What began as a Women’s History Month gathering became an international event platform spanning four editions, three cities, and two countries.
The Brief
Creating a Platform for the Women Shaping Sound and Shifting Culture
Women have always shaped the music industry, but many of the leaders determining what audiences hear, discover, experience, and remember work beyond the stage.
They identify and develop artists. They shape creative direction, lead global marketing campaigns, curate platforms, manage budgets, build partnerships, produce live experiences, and determine how music travels through technology and culture. Their influence is substantial, but the people responsible for this work are not always placed at the center of the story.
Channing & Company saw an opportunity to create more than another industry panel. Women in Music would give accomplished women a platform to speak candidly about their work, give audiences access to the leaders shaping the business, and give partners a meaningful way to participate in music and culture.
The experience needed a central purpose, a recognizable identity, an evolving programming model, and a partnership structure capable of carrying it into new markets without losing what made it valuable.
The Strategy
Building a Repeatable Cultural Platform for New Markets
Women in Music was developed as a platform from the beginning—not as a one-time activation.
Channing & Company established a central narrative, programming format, creative identity, brand-partnership model, and audience experience that could be repeated and adapted. Every edition retained the same cultural purpose while introducing new speakers, subjects, destinations, and industry perspectives.
The platform was organized around three ideas:
Empowering women. Amplifying voices. Celebrating legacy.
This promise guided the programming, creative direction, promotion, hospitality, partnerships, and guest experience. It also gave Women in Music room to grow from a broad industry conversation into more focused programming around technology, streaming, live experiences, and the future of the music business.
The objective was consistency without sameness. Women in Music needed to feel familiar as it traveled while remaining responsive to the character, community, and cultural context of each city.
Channing & Company’s Role in Building the Global Event Platform
Channing & Company developed and managed the connected strategy, brand partnership, programming, creative direction, experiential marketing, production, and audience experience behind Women in Music.
The studio’s role extended from the central concept through delivery. Channing & Company shaped the platform’s positioning, established the programming framework, identified and coordinated speakers, developed the visual system, led campaign creative, managed partner communications, and oversaw the experience across four editions.
Channing Bailey and Erika Bennet led the platform’s strategy and creative direction, ensuring the identity, programming, partnership, hospitality, and production decisions reinforced one recognizable idea.
This connected approach allowed Women in Music to expand without becoming fragmented. The series did not simply repeat an event in different locations. It carried a defined cultural purpose and experience model into each market while allowing the people, subjects, and destinations to give every edition its own relevance.
Convening the Women Leading Music, Marketing, A&R, Technology, and Live Experience
Women in Music was built around the caliber and range of leadership in the room.
Victoria White-Mason, Vice President of Marketing at Columbia Records, brought experience overseeing campaigns for artists including Beyoncé, Rosalía, Pharrell, and Baby Keem. Jameka Pankey, Head of Events & Experiential for Artist at Amazon Music, represented the growing influence of live experiences in connecting artists, audiences, and communities.
The series also convened Katie Studley, Head of Nashville Editorial at Spotify; Tina Ibanez, Head of Creative at Epic Records; Sydney Vann, Senior Director of Marketing at Def Jam Recordings; Haarlem Branch, Vice President of A&R at Republic Records; Stephanie McGuire, Head of A&R at Sony Music; Leena Khatib, Vice President of Budgets and Operations at EMPIRE; and Avyaunce Anderson, U.S. Curation Manager at COLORS Studios.
Founders and independent leaders expanded the conversation further. Shadeh Smith, founder of Everyday Dreamer, represented multidisciplinary creative practice, while Olga Heijns, founder of Next Era Publishing and Unmanageable Artists, brought an entrepreneurial perspective spanning music publishing and artist management.
Together, the speakers represented the interconnected system behind contemporary music: the people deciding which artists emerge, how their creative worlds are built, how their work is marketed, where it is discovered, and how audiences ultimately experience it.
Soho House as a Global Cultural and Hospitality Partner
Soho House provided more than a series of venues. Its brand, membership, hospitality, and international network became part of how Women in Music was positioned and experienced.
The Houses offered an alternative to the scale and formality of a traditional music-industry conference. Speakers and guests entered environments already designed around creativity, conversation, and community. The proximity between the panel, audience, dining spaces, bars, and social areas encouraged a different kind of exchange—more personal, more candid, and more likely to continue after the formal program ended.
Channing & Company brought the central idea, cultural storytelling, programming, creative direction, and experience development. Soho House brought a recognizable hospitality environment, a community of creative professionals, and an international network capable of introducing the platform to new markets.
The collaboration demonstrates Channing & Company’s approach to brand partnerships: begin with a shared purpose, identify what each participant uniquely contributes, and create an experience made more valuable by the relationship.
Using Hospitality, Place, and Travel to Expand the Cultural Experience
Every destination changed the conversation.
Nashville connected the platform to one of the world’s most recognizable music cities and the executives shaping its evolving creative economy. Amsterdam introduced international perspectives across publishing, artist management, A&R, and global marketing. New York brought together leaders from record labels, artist development, editorial curation, creative direction, and brand partnerships.
Each House gave the platform a distinct physical and cultural context while preserving the familiarity of Soho House hospitality. Guests could encounter Women in Music in another city and immediately recognize the spirit of the experience.
Travel was more than an operational requirement. It expanded the platform’s network, introduced new voices, and allowed ideas to move between creative communities. Women in Music became a traveling cultural experience that could respond to a destination without becoming disconnected from the larger series.
The model also creates opportunities beyond music. Hotels, private clubs, resorts, destination properties, tourism organizations, and travel brands can use original cultural programming to attract new audiences, deepen relationships with members and guests, support local creative communities, and build experiences associated with a place.
Programming Conversations Across the Music Industry
The programming was designed to reveal how music moves through culture.
Rather than centering performers alone, Women in Music placed the executives and creative leaders responsible for artist development, brand building, marketing, distribution, technology, finance, curation, partnerships, and live experiences at the center of the conversation.
Bringing these disciplines together gave audiences a more complete view of the industry. A&R shapes who receives investment. Creative direction determines how an artist enters the world. Marketing and editorial curation influence discovery. Technology changes distribution. Experiential campaigns turn music into shared cultural moments.
The framework remained consistent across the series, but the subject matter evolved with each market and group of speakers. This allowed every edition to contribute a distinct perspective while advancing one larger conversation about women’s leadership throughout the music industry.
Creating a Flexible Event Identity Designed to Travel
Channing & Company developed an event identity and creative system that allowed Women in Music to remain recognizable across four editions, three cities, and two countries.
The art direction balanced the authority of an industry program with the warmth and energy of a cultural gathering. Speaker portraits, declarative messaging, event information, location details, and partner branding were organized into a flexible campaign structure that could adapt to different panel sizes, subjects, markets, and promotional formats.
The system created continuity across social media, partner communications, registration, speaker announcements, event materials, digital promotion, and the physical experience. It helped audiences understand that every gathering belonged to a growing international platform rather than a collection of unrelated events.
The identity did not overpower the women being featured. It created a consistent stage on which their work, perspectives, and leadership could be seen.
Designing an Experiential Marketing Program Beyond the Panel
Women in Music was designed as more than a panel discussion.
Each edition began before guests entered the House through campaign creative, partner communications, speaker announcements, and registration. Inside, the formal program gave attendees direct access to accomplished women working across the creative and commercial sides of music.
Hospitality extended the experience. Dinners, mixers, after-parties, DJ sets, and informal conversations created additional opportunities for speakers and guests to exchange perspectives, develop relationships, and continue conversations outside the structure of the panel.
In Amsterdam, the program expanded into an after-party featuring international DJs. In Nashville and New York, the private-club setting allowed the experience to move naturally from the stage into the social life of the House.
Programming, art direction, hospitality, production, and account management were treated as one connected audience journey. The result felt professionally valuable without becoming overly formal: a cultural gathering with the access and substance of an industry forum.
Brand partnerships extended Women in Music beyond the formal program.
At Soho House Nashville, Channing & Company developed speaker gift bags featuring products sponsored by Adidas Originals, Starface, Luc Belaire, AKILA Eyewear, and SheaMoisture. The gifts transformed partner participation into a direct expression of hospitality—recognizing the speakers while placing culturally relevant brands inside the experience.
Brand credits
@adidasoriginals · @starface · @officialbelaire · @akila.la · @sheamoisture
Four Women in Music Editions Across Three Cities and Two Countries
Women in Music at Soho House Nashville
Women in Music launched at Soho House Nashville on March 28, 2025.
The inaugural conversation featured Victoria White-Mason, Vice President of Marketing at Columbia Records; Leena Khatib, Vice President of Budgets and Operations at EMPIRE; Shadeh Smith, multidisciplinary creative and founder of Everyday Dreamer; and Erika Bennett, Head of Global Brand Partnerships at Channing & Company.
Together, they brought perspectives spanning major artist campaigns, finance, operations, creative practice, entrepreneurship, and brand partnerships.
Nashville provided a natural foundation for the platform. The city is globally associated with music, but its influence extends far beyond artists and performance. The first edition placed women working across the creative and commercial sides of the industry at the center of the room.
It also established the experience model for everything that followed: respected voices, candid conversation, thoughtful hospitality, and meaningful professional connection.
Marketing
Channing & Company developed the speaker-announcement campaign for the inaugural Women in Music event at Soho House Nashville. The flexible marketing system placed Victoria White-Mason, Leena Khatib, Shadeh Smith, and Erika Bennett at the center of the visual narrative while maintaining consistency across portraits, professional titles, event details, and partner branding.
Women in Music at Soho House Amsterdam
Less than two months later, Women in Music expanded internationally at Soho House Amsterdam on May 13, 2025.
The conversation featured Olga Heijns, founder of Next Era Publishing and Unmanageable Artists; international marketing leader Roxy Sun; Stephanie McGuire, Head of A&R at Sony Music and founder of McGuire Banks; and Erika Bennett of Channing & Company.
The Amsterdam edition widened the platform through international perspectives on music publishing, artist management, A&R, marketing, and global audience development.
An after-party featuring DJ sets from Keyrah and Zoe Janice extended the experience beyond the panel, allowing the evening to move from industry dialogue into music, hospitality, and celebration.
Moving from Nashville to Amsterdam demonstrated that Women in Music could travel without losing its identity. The platform could enter a new country, respond to a different creative market, and remain recognizable in both purpose and experience.
Marketing
Channing & Company developed the speaker and DJ marketing campaign for Women in Music at Soho House Amsterdam. The flexible portrait system introduced Olga Heijns, Roxy Sun, Stephanie McGuire, Erika Bennett, Zoë Janice, and Keyrah while maintaining continuity across speakers, performers, professional titles, event information, and partner branding.
Women in Music at Soho House New York City
Women in Music continued at Soho House New York City on September 9, 2025.
The third edition convened Tina Ibanez, Head of Creative at Epic Records; Avyaunce Anderson, U.S. Curation Manager at COLORS Studios; Sydney Vann, Senior Director of Marketing at Def Jam Recordings; Haarlem Branch, Vice President of A&R at Republic Records; and Erika Bennett, Head of Global Brand Partnerships at Channing & Company.
New York expanded the platform’s exploration of how music moves through culture. The panel connected the disciplines responsible for identifying artists, developing their creative worlds, introducing their work to audiences, and building the partnerships that extend their reach.
Within the intimate environment of Soho House New York, the program brought senior decision-makers into direct conversation with the creative community—making the leadership behind major labels, music platforms, and cultural institutions more visible and accessible.
Marketing
Channing & Company developed the key art and speaker-marketing campaign for Women in Music at Ludlow House in New York City. The flexible identity placed Erika Bennett, Haarlem Branch, Sydney Vann, and Tina Ibanez at the center of the campaign while maintaining continuity across speaker portraits, professional titles, event information, and partnership branding.
Women in Music: Tech Edition at Soho House Nashville
Women in Music returned to Soho House Nashville on March 29, 2026, with a focused exploration of music and technology.
Women in Music: Tech Edition featured Jameka Pankey, Head of Events & Experiential for Artist at Amazon Music; Katie Studley, Head of Nashville Editorial at Spotify; and Erika Bennett, Head of Global Brand Partnerships at Channing & Company.
The conversation examined how experiential campaigns, streaming platforms, editorial programming, technology, and brand partnerships are changing how artists connect with audiences.
Pankey brought more than 15 years of experience developing people, culture, and experiences, including work at the intersection of artists, audiences, and community. Studley offered a perspective from one of the world’s most influential music-discovery platforms. Together, they demonstrated how technology and live experience increasingly shape what listeners find, share, attend, and remember.
The Tech Edition showed that Women in Music could evolve through subject matter as well as geography. It established a model for future programming around AI, audio innovation, digital products, data, the creator economy, and the technologies reshaping music.
Managing Production and Brand Partnerships Across Markets
Expanding Women in Music across cities and countries required consistent strategic and creative leadership behind the experience.
Channing & Company managed the relationship between the platform and Soho House while coordinating programming, speakers, creative development, campaign delivery, production, approvals, and the audience experience across every edition.
The operating model needed enough structure to preserve quality and enough flexibility to respond to different Houses, markets, speakers, and programming themes. Creative direction, account management, partner communication, and production were integrated so the series could evolve without becoming fragmented.
The experience remained recognizable because its strategy, identity, programming, partnership, hospitality, and delivery were managed as one connected system.
The Impact
From a Women’s History Month Gathering to an International Event Platform
Women in Music grew from one Nashville gathering into a four-edition international event platform spanning three cities and two countries.
The series brought together leaders representing Amazon Music, Spotify, Columbia Records, Epic Records, Def Jam Recordings, Republic Records, Sony Music, EMPIRE, COLORS Studios, and independent ventures across publishing, management, creativity, and culture.
Each edition expanded the platform differently:
- Nashville established the concept and experience.
- Amsterdam demonstrated its international potential.
- New York broadened its industry representation.
- The Tech Edition introduced a model for subject-focused programming.
Better by Design: Channing & Company Philosophy in Action
The project also brought Channing & Company’s four operating pillars together within one platform:
- Craft through the identity, art direction, campaign creative, and experience design.
- Commerce through strategic brand partnerships and professional relationships.
- Culture through the leaders, disciplines, and ideas brought forward.
- Community through spaces designed for visibility, conversation, and shared growth.
Women in Music demonstrates what becomes possible when an event is developed as a cultural platform. With a clear position, complementary partners, thoughtful hospitality, and an adaptable experience system, one gathering can become an idea capable of traveling, evolving, and building relevance across markets.
Brand Architecture: Build a Map of Everyday Literacy
Traditional definitions of literacy often stop at reading and writing. WellRead expanded the idea. Literacy became the knowledge and confidence required to navigate the systems, choices, and information shaping everyday life.
This parent-program architecture preserved the awareness and equity already created around the book club while establishing room for additional content, partnerships, experts, campaigns, and experiences.
Channing & Company organized the mission into nine focused literacies:
- Book Literacy
- Financial Literacy
- Sexual Literacy
- Civic Literacy
- Voting Literacy
- Career Literacy
- Wellness Literacy
- Travel Literacy
- Emotional Literacy
These categories functioned as program areas, content structures, partnership territories, expert frameworks, and a long-term organizational roadmap. They were entry points into one larger belief: greater understanding influences how people care for themselves, pursue opportunity, participate in society, and contribute to their communities.
The architecture gave WellRead a repeatable structure for educational content, campaigns, experts, donor initiatives, partnerships, programs, and future experiences. It also gave the organization a more precise way to communicate. Instead of presenting wellness as one broad and ambiguous concept, WellRead could identify a specific form of literacy and guide audiences toward an appropriate level of understanding.
The brand architecture transformed an expansive mission into a system that could be navigated, communicated, funded, and expanded.
Create a Cultural Experience Worth Traveling For
Channing & Company helps companies, hospitality groups, private clubs, cultural organizations, and destination brands develop experiential marketing programs and event platforms connecting strategy, brand partnerships, programming, creative direction, production, hospitality, and audience experience.
Whether the opportunity begins with one gathering or a multi-market ambition, we create the central idea and connected system needed to help it grow.
Share your audience, objectives, locations, timeline, budget, potential partners, and anticipated event scope.
Frequently Asked Questions About Event Platforms and Experiential Marketing
An event platform is a repeatable concept designed to support multiple editions, locations, partners, audiences, or programming themes. Unlike a one-time event, it has a defined purpose, identity, format, and operating model that allow it to grow while remaining recognizable.
An event brings people together at a particular place and time. An experiential marketing platform connects that gathering to a larger brand strategy, audience objective, partnership model, creative system, and plan for continued engagement.
Women in Music was an international event platform created and presented by Channing & Company in partnership with Soho House. The four-edition series celebrated women shaping sound and shifting culture through music, business, technology, creativity, and live experience.
Channing & Company created and presented Women in Music in partnership with Soho House. Channing Bailey and Erika Bennett led the strategy and creative direction behind the platform.
Channing & Company led brand strategy, creative direction, art direction, experiential marketing, cultural programming, production, and account management across four editions in Nashville, Amsterdam, and New York City.
Soho House provided an international hospitality network, private-club environments, and access to creative communities in each market. Its spaces allowed formal programming to transition naturally into dining, networking, music, and more personal conversation.
Hotels, private clubs, resorts, and destination properties can use original cultural programming to attract new audiences, strengthen guest and member relationships, support local creative communities, and create experiences associated with the property’s identity. The strongest programs connect the destination, audience, brand, and cultural subject through a repeatable concept.
Strong brand partnerships bring together complementary audiences, expertise, environments, distribution, or cultural credibility. Each partner should make the resulting experience more useful, relevant, or distinctive than either organization could create independently.
Yes. Channing & Company can develop the central idea, positioning, naming, partnership strategy, identity, programming structure, campaign creative, production approach, and audience journey for a new cultural or experiential platform.
Yes. Channing & Company can evaluate an existing event and create the strategy, identity, programming framework, partnership model, and creative system required to expand it into additional editions, locations, or formats.
Yes. Channing & Company works across markets and can coordinate the strategic, creative, experiential, production, hospitality, and partner-facing elements of a multi-city platform. The final scope depends on the locations, collaborators, travel, production requirements, and internal resources involved.
Investment depends on the number of events, markets, partners, creative deliverables, production requirements, travel, content, and promotional scope. Channing & Company develops a customized scope after reviewing the project’s objectives, timeline, budget, and operational needs.
Begin by defining the audience, business objective, cultural opportunity, potential partners, desired markets, timeline, and available budget. Channing & Company uses this information to determine whether the opportunity should be structured as a single activation, recurring series, or multi-market platform.
Women in Music is a global event platform created and presented by Channing & Company in partnership with Soho House.
Women in Music is a global event platform created and presented by Channing & Company in partnership with Soho House. Designed to celebrate the women shaping sound and shifting culture, the series brought leaders from Amazon Music, Spotify, Columbia Records, Epic Records, Def Jam Recordings, Republic Records, Sony Music, EMPIRE, and other influential organizations into candid conversation and meaningful connection.
Channing & Company led the platform strategy, brand partnerships, cultural programming, creative direction, event marketing, production, and audience experience. A flexible identity and repeatable programming model allowed the concept to travel from Nashville to Amsterdam and New York City while adapting to each market. What began as a Women’s History Month gathering became an international cultural platform spanning four editions, three cities, and two countries.
Project: Women in Music x Soho House
Created and Presented by: Channing & Company
Global Hospitality Partner: Soho House
Strategy and Creative Direction: Channing Bailey, Erika Bennett
Production Partner: ssssIRVE
Project Scope: Event Platform Strategy, Brand Strategy, Positioning, Brand Partnerships, Cultural Programming, Creative Direction, Art Direction, Event Identity Design, Campaign Development, Speaker Marketing, Experiential Marketing, Hospitality Experience Design, Speaker and Talent Coordination, Partner Management, Event Production, Account Management, and Multi-Market Expansion.