Good morning! Rep. Elise Stefanik is no longer in the running to be UN ambassador, General Motors is hurt by a new tariff announcement, and Billboard’s Women in Music Awards are this weekend.
– Homegrown talent. Growing up as the daughter of Korean immigrants in Los Angeles, Jenna Adler didn’t always fit in. Kids were mean, she says, and she felt the most at home listening to the radio or hanging out with artists—other outcasts who didn’t mind that her parents didn’t speak English.
That love of music and creativity led her to pursue a career at Creative Arts Agency, or CAA—and now, Adler is being honored at Billboard’s Women in Music event this weekend with the Executive of the Year award, an acknowledgement from her peers in the industry of her influence and groundbreaking work.
A veteran of more than 25 years at CAA, Adler worked her way up from an assistant position to become the co-head of CAA’s global hip-hop/R&B touring group. She was the agency’s first “homegrown” woman music agent, and she now represents artists including Jennifer Lopez, Doja Cat, Charli XCX, and Chloe x Halle.
In her time at CAA, she’s watched the business evolve into a more accepting and diverse place. She was one of the first, if not the first, agents to take maternity leave, and she credits the all-male management at the company with being forward-thinking and family-friendly. Without those bosses, she says, she might not have made it back to work after her second child at all. She hopes to be able to pay it forward by helping current female employees navigate work-life balance and the trade-offs that everyone needs to make.
“We have so many new moms, and I tell them all the time, ‘Take those months off,'” Adler says of maternity leave. “I really want to be that person, because that’s what I didn’t have. I didn’t have somebody to look to and say, ‘Is this okay?’”
She’s inspired by her own sons, now 22 and 24, when she thinks about the future of women in the music industry. For her sons, it’s normal for their mom to be a high-powered executive.
“My kids are so proud of me,” she says. “And I think it’s like that in more and more and more households. More men have an open mind. So we just move all these old men out of here. But I definitely see a bright future.”
Adler has long focused on amplifying diverse voices—and, as of late, that includes her own. Though she describes herself as “rough around the edges,” she says she still dreams of her career growing bigger and bigger. And at a time when many would be taking a victory lap, she has no plans to slow down.
“I always wanted it all, I always wanted to run everything,” she says. “I asked myself when I got this honor, ‘Is this it?’ And I was like, ‘No, this isn’t it.’ I just have so much more.”
Alicia Adamczyk
alicia.adamczyk@fortune.com
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