Jennifer Brown Confirmed As SOCAN CEO. New Board Appointed Too

By FYI Staff

Jennifer Brown has been confirmed as CEO of SOCAN, becoming the first woman to lead Canada’s largest music and visual arts rights organization and the first to be appointed to the role from within the company.

She had held the interim CEO role since April 2020, replacing Eric Baptiste who resigned after more than a decade of leading the Canadian performing rights organization.

“Jennifer Brown’s work at SOCAN is exemplary, her leadership abilities are remarkable, and her passion for the interests of our members and stakeholders is unsurpassed,” said Marc Ouellette, President of SOCAN’s board of directors. “It is a great pleasure to see her rise to a role that she earned through decades of constant commitment and persistent determination to do what is right for our more than 175,000 members and nearly 300 employees.”

With more than two decades of strategic experience in rights management, licensing, advocacy and support for music creators and publishers, Brown started her career with SOCAN in in 1995 as a representative in the company’s Membership department. She has held progressive leadership positions, including Vice President of SOCAN’s Licensing department, before taking on the role of Senior Vice President of Operations & Reproduction Rights in 2018.

Admired by her colleagues for her intelligence, humility and hands-on style, Jennifer Brown’s numerous accomplishments with SOCAN include establishing SOCAN Reproduction Rights presence, guiding the company’s Licensing department to record-setting results, establishing SOCAN’s cost-effective and strategic re-structuring, and the introduction of new and innovative customer-facing tools, all of which have resulted in improved licensing collection efforts and increased royalties distributed to SOCAN’s songwriter, composer and music publisher members.

She grew up in a household in which royalties from music creation and performance were a crucial source of income. The Family Brown would become one of the country’s more successful recording and performing groups and her father as the principal songwriter achieved several songwriting awards.

“I know what it’s like to rely on fair royalties through hard work, and I’ve seen songwriting as a career first-hand,” Brown said, “I will continue to work to make SOCAN the organization that our members and licensed organizations so richly deserve.”

SOCAN also recently announced the appointment of Jean-Christian Céré as Chief Membership Officer, effective June 28th, and Vanessa Thomas to the role of Vice-President, Member & Industry Relations, which came into effect on June 14th.

Significantly, the PRO has also named a new board of directors.

Representing SOCAN Music Writer Members (alphabetically by last name):
    David Bussières
    Victor Davies *
    Damhnait Doyle *
    Rhonda Head
    Ed Henderson *
    Stan Meissner *
    Glenn Morley *
    Marc Ouellette *
    Diane Tell *

Representing SOCAN Music Publisher Members (alphabetically by company name):

    Diane Pinet, Bloc-Notes Music Publishing
    Jennifer Beavis, BMG Rights Management Canada
    Jennifer Mitchell, Casablanca Media Publishing *
    Daniel Lafrance, Éditorial Avenue
    Mark Jowett, Nettwerk Music Group
    Cheryl Link, Peermusic Canada Inc. *
    Gary Furniss, Sony/ATV Music Publishing Canada *
    Patrick Curley, Third Side Music *
    Vivian Barclay, Warner/Chappell Music Canada *

Incumbents are asterisked.