International music company Squeak E. Clean Studios has brought on Kayla Monetta as director of new business, working out of its New York location. She will shape the company’s sales strategies and approach, and continue to scale revenue across North America through new initiatives, partnerships, and markets. She will additionally lean into her vast experience to further strengthen the studio’s music supervision team, which has now grown to six. Monetta’s career has spanned a broad scope of music marketing, publicity and production roles, from licensing and supervision to creative direction, journalism, project management, and beyond. She has worked on album campaigns for clients including The Strokes, Yacht, Miike Snow, Autre Ne Veut, and White Denim. Previous roles include serving as director of licensing and A&R with The Greater Goods Co. and music supervisor and head of A&R with BUTTER Music and Sound. A former college radio DJ, Monetta began her career writing about bands and overseeing digital marketing in New York at VICE’s Noisey before working for indie record labels such as Downtown Records and Cult Records. She moved to Los Angeles in 2016 to pursue music licensing at Third Side Music Publishing before moving on to The Greater Goods Co. where she signed artists while pitching and placing music in ads, television shows, video games, and more. This led to a role at BUTTER Music and Sound working with clients like Dominos, Supercell, Google, Spectrum, Haagen Dazs, and more….
Michele Ruiz Wright has joined SMPTE as director of business development and outreach. Wright will lead the Society’s marketing and sales teams and partner with SMPTE staff and volunteers to guide multiplatform marketing and outreach to new and diverse members and partners. She reports to David Grindle, SMPTE’s executive director. Wright is a multidimensional senior executive with experience in pharmaceutical/biotechnology sales, healthcare administration, and business development for Fortune 100 companies and an international non-profit organization. She is the recipient of numerous accolades and awards for her work as an advocate for health equity, as an author and creator of social-emotional and STEM-focused content and edutainment platforms for elementary students, and as a business and organizational leader. A native of Tuskegee, Alabama, Wright is the 2022 USA Today Woman of the Year for Arkansas. She and her husband, Terry Wright, made history in 2022 as the first people of color to be honored by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation (CFF) with the organization’s top honor, the Breath of Life Award, and to be named CF Ambassadors…..
Video broadcast technology company FOR-A has appointed Robert Shen as regional sales manager for South-East Asia and Oceania. He joins from EVS Broadcast where he was responsible for the Axon product lines in control, monitoring, routing and video processing. Originally trained as a licensed aircraft maintenance engineer in radar and communications with the Republic of Singapore Air Force, he subsequently achieved a degree in computer science and an MBA from Curtin University. Since then, he has spent two decades in the broadcast industry with a number of vendors and gaining expertise in IPTV and OTT, master control and newsroom automation, quality control and turnkey TV installations. Shen will be based in Singapore….
SCHROM x Yacht Club and Be Electric Studios Launch Electric XR for Virtual Production
SCHROM x Yacht Club, a full-service live-action, tabletop, and postproduction company, has teamed with Be Electric Studios, a soundstage, equipment rental, and virtual production company, to launch Electric XR, a virtual production collective.
Industry veteran Thomas Rossano will lead the new venture, which provides advanced virtual production solutions across multiple facilities. He brings over 25 years of experience in live-action, tabletop, postproduction and talent curation to enhance Electric XR’s offerings as a resource for brands and agencies, as well as other production companies in need of virtual production solutions. Additionally Rossano continues to serve as EP at XR New York (XR-NY), a role he’s held since December 2022. SCHROM x Yacht Club originally established XR-NY to help provide XR services for third-party rentals. While XR-NY will continue to function independently for SCHROM X Yacht Club, it now operates under the Electric XR umbrella.
Rossano’s expertise spans producing live-action commercials, branded content, interactive and experiential content. In addition to leading Electric XR, he holds responsibilities at SCHROM x Yacht Club which include driving business development, collaborating with sales reps and expanding the company’s creative talent network. Rossano’s career includes serving as an exec producer at Hungry Man for about 11 years, right from that company’s inception. He then went on to become a partner at Station Film where he also had a lengthy tenure. Later he was a partner at PRISM. Then after the pandemic hit, he became a freelance EP for nearly two years, looking into opportunities in virtual production, which led him to XR NY and now Electric XR. Over the years, he has produced high-profile... Read More