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Secretly is proud to celebrate Vera Savcic, CFO, who has just been honored as part of Billboard's list of 2020 Women in Music Executives. Since joining Secretly this spring, shortly before the pandemic lockdown began, Savcic has guided top-level management and an international team of 140 through the COVID-19 crisis, acting swiftly to protect their employees and diminish the economic impact for vulnerable parties, from artists to distributed label partners and beyond. Savcic also played a crucial role in making Secretly more nimble as its affiliate companies and artist partners sought to provide financial support to a variety of issues around social equity, justice, and inclusion throughout 2020. One example of this rapid response was Secretly Group passing through its share of digital sales to artists across every Bandcamp Friday, which has generated nearly $250,000 for artists on those days. Secretly artists, in turn, donated close to $200,000 to charity across various fundraising singles and collections. 

Before joining Secretly, Savcic served as Global Head of Content Operations at Spotify, COO/CFO at Seed Media Group, a data analytics company, and helped early stage start-ups develop financial and business plans. Her career in the music industry began in the '90s when she was General Manager for leading independent label TVT Records. Prior to that, she was an investment banker specializing in film and TV. She is a supporter of The Actors Theatre Workshop in New York, and advocates on behalf of Dream of Wild Health, a Minneapolis-based youth organization working to restore health and well-being in the Native community. Earlier this fall Savcic managed the stress of 2020 by participating in phone-banking for key swing States in the Presidential Election.

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You can find Billboard's full list of Executives HERE, and read Vera Savcic's contributions on how the industry can improve gender equity in an additional Billboard feature HERE. In it, she highlights the internally published annual gender pay gap analysis and Secretly's rule that all promoted panels should be adequately diverse such that they are at least 50% inclusive of under-represented groups, including female representation. On more room for change in the music business, she adds: 

"We are far behind in ownership - female-owned music companies or women owning controlling shares of companies. There are no [key performance indicators] that we embrace as an industry to track the very necessary changes. When you start tracking the data you become more aware of it and can begin to change it."

Vera Savcic's recent move to Secretly marks her return to the music industry after more than a decade spent in the tech sector. On her experience joining the company, she says: 

"Being back in this cultural ecosystem is astounding and exciting. On top of that, I am a woman, of a certain age no less. Ageism is prevalent in this country and certainly in the music industry, yet here I am, having bucked two trends. I want to believe that this says more about our evolving attitudes and the positive changes in our industry than it does about me in particular. 

One of the things that drew me to this team is that there were already women in leadership positions - as our head of business affairs, Kari Boston, and also our head of music publishing, Kathy Cook. The message and the energy that this brings to the group is vital for a growing enterprise. I am humbled to work with such a caring and exceptional team and am thrilled to contribute to growth for our staff, artist and label community."

Related Article: Secretly Publishing Signs Deals With Fort William Artist Management Artists

Secretly is an international, independent and groundbreaking music ecosystem, whose industry-shaping output and operations uphold the principle that the most important cultural contributions come from artists and the small to medium-sized businesses that support them. Last month, the company - which consists of Secretly Group record labels Dead Oceans, Jagjaguwar and Secretly Canadian, Ghostly International, The Numero Group, 37d03d, Secretly Publishing and Secretly Distribution - earned seven 2021 GRAMMY nominations, including Best New Artist for Phoebe Bridgers (Dead Oceans). 

In addition to releasing some of the year's most critically-acclaimed albums from Bridgers, Bright Eyes, Khruangbin, Moses Sumney, Porridge Radio and dozens of others, Secretly has addressed the adversities of 2020 by launching ambitious new projects and partnerships, instituting actionable change, and innovating new ways to champion the creative voices they represent. 

For a full list of 2020 highlights from the extended Secretly family, read more here.