Melissa Garcia is a Founding Partner at Collective Entertainment. As a talent manager and consultant, she develops careers, and strategizes marketing initiatives in order to leverage her clients’ brands to grow their audiences.
Since 2011, she’s worked with numerous clients and companies across the music, sports, and skydiving industries as a project manager, day-to-day manager, tour manager, marketing/social media consultant, and marketing generalist. From 2020-2022, she served as Chief Marketing Officer of nonprofit organization #iVoted Festival where she worked with a team of over 200 volunteers to produce the largest digital concert event in history, all in support of voter turnout.
Melissa holds a Master’s degree in Music Business from NYU Steinhardt. and a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration from UF.
What advice would you give to any woman wanting to enter the industry, whether they want to be in the business or an artist?
My advice to any woman entering the industry is to surround yourself with people who are better than you. You are a representation of the people closest to you, so choose people who you admire and look up to so that you can be better too.
What adversities have you faced as a woman in such a male-dominated space?
As an artist manager, I would sometimes get mistaken for being the girlfriend/partner/wife of a male client in a public space like a show or festival, especially when I was in my 20's. Yet if the roles were reversed, if I were a man and the client a woman, I'd likely be perceived as their manager or someone similar. I've experienced other instances where I wasn't taken as seriously as my male cohorts, simply because I was young and a woman.
Despite all this, I've learned to embrace the idea of mistaken identity or being underestimated. Because regardless of how someone initially perceives me, they'll get to see who I really am. I know my work speaks for itself--and it speaks volumes.
In what ways can women come together and support each other year-round?
Celebrate other women! Celebrate their promotions and accomplishments. Celebrate their personal victories like getting married or starting a family or becoming newly single. Celebrate the unbreakable friendships and bonds that we cultivate with one another. And tell the woman in your life that you love them, appreciate them, and see them for who they truly are. Tell them so often and with intention.
Most of all, celebrate young girls! Listen to them and spend time with them. Show them that we as women SEE who they are. Mentor, teach, volunteer. Just simply being there for them speaks to the importance of womanhood.
How was your experience coming into the industry?
I was lucky. Not only did I get admitted into one of the best music business schools in the world at NYU, I was also surrounded by strong, smart, dedicated, and independent individuals, especially women. I had people I looked up to. I had peers that were on similar journeys as me. I was going to as many shows as I could while still in school. I was living and breathing the music industry in NYC. Without those experiences, I wouldn't be where I am today.
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