Gershon oversees the entire A&R department at Warner Bros. And manages their artist roster which includes, Big & Rich, Faith Hill and Blake Shelton, among others. Formerly, Gershon was the Sr. Director of A&R, Sony Nashville. She is a 20-year industry veteran, has had a diverse career that includes concert promotion, artist management, A&R, song plugging, and film and television production.

Bill Hearn was formerly the President of Sparrow Records prior to being named President and CEO of EMI CMG, a division of EMI Recorded Music North America.  His father, Billy Ray Hearn, who founded Sparrow, continues to function as Chairman of the group.  A 29-year industry veteran, Hearn oversees management of EMI CMG Label Group, EMI CMG Distribution and EMI CMG Publishing.  He serves on The Sparrow Foundation and TJ Martell Foundation.

Jim Sturgeon is CEO and President of Naxos of America, a company that has become the leading independent classical music distributor in the United States under his direction.  Sturgeon has been at the forefront of exploring opportunities on the internet, making Naxos the first distributor to bring brick-and-mortar retail into the digital market through a partnership with digital music service eMusic to produce the MPkey series of classical music download collections.  This initiative, and many others, has led the Wall Street Journal to call Naxos of America “a major force in classical music’s move online.” 

In 1998, Sturgeon moved Naxos of America from New Jersey to Nashville and brought in an entirely new staff, one in a series of bold and innovative moves that have resulted in a quadrupling of revenue and company profitability for the first time. To create awareness within Tennessee for Naxos, the flagship label for Naxos of America (both are owned by Naxos Global Distribution), Sturgeon created a promotion with the State Health Department Offices and McNeil Consumer Products, makers of Children’s Tylenol, where parents of each newborn in Tennessee would receive a free copy of the new release Listen, Learn and Grow; the move helped to make the title one of Naxos’s best-selling discs and created millions of media impressions.  Naxos has also increased its status within the American classical music community of critics: its recordings are now regularly nominated for GRAMMYs and its best-selling 3-CD set of William Bolcom’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience won three of the awards last February. 

Born in Ireland and raised in Canada, Sturgeon began his music career as a drummer and was a co-founder of CMC, the number one Canadian distributor of Contemporary Christian and Gospel music.  Sturgeon arrived in Nashville in 1993 to become Head of Sales at Warner Alliance.  He later assumed responsibilities in marketing and artist development, working to make Caedmon’s Call the largest Contemporary Christian debut band on Soundscan ever and taking a video of the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir to Gold status.

Catherine Fitterman is a classically trained pianist with degrees in Piano Pedagogy and Arts Administration. She was the Founding Director of the Entrepreneurship Center for Music at the University of Colorado at Boulder, relocating in August 2002 to New York City to begin teaching at New York University in Music Business. Fitterman's professional experiences include a mix of working and teaching in the arts from both a for-profit and not-for-profit perspective. She has served as a concert promoter, producer and presenter (University of Colorado), artist manager (Columbia Artists Management), major gifts fundraiser (Allied Jewish Federation and University of Colorado), orchestra administrator (Cincinnati Symphony), and college teacher (University of Colorado and NYU).

Faculty at Mike Curb College of Entertainment and MB. Former experience as a professional musician with Disney, and others. He has worked professionally in artist management (328 management), publishing (Stroudavarious Publishing)and concert promotions (Glenn Smith Presents, Inc). David is past director of operations of Acklen Records and oversaw the Fisk Singers project garnering both Grammy nominations and Dove awards. David has spent several years working with local record companies developing Record Company Operations Coursework and  recently completed a professional "Internship" at Word Records this summer. Mr. Herrera has research interest in innovation, disruptive technology, and is especially interested in alternative revenue streams or new emerging models for the music business. He is currently completing his Ph.D. work in business management with a focus on organizational theory.