Year in (More Than) Numbers 2023

Excited to share my 2023 wrap up! 2023 was a year that felt like it went by so quickly that I'm grateful to do this wrap up just to be able to properly reflect on the past year and really be intentional about 2024.

As I always start this, I'll say: "Though I partially credit my success this year to my hard work, ambition & endurance, I've also been a benefactor of luck, capitalism, marital privilege, and of course the privileges I often take for granted such as being born middle-class in a Western country without physical or mental disability that impedes me from functioning adequately in a capitalist society."

Career:

Full Time Job:

I was at Shoobs for all of 2023. Working for a Black woman owned startup has been a wonderful experience. It's the first time in my career I feel like I'm able to combine my marketing, data & insights, and strategy skills consistently in my every day work. Using those skills, I got to work on projects with companies and artists I love for artist marketing, research, and logistical projects throughout 2023 including a three part series on Amapiano with Chartmetric & Musiio by SoundCloud .

As always, drop me a note if you want to work with a Black British woman own business about how to reach an audience that loves Black music & culture.

Highlight: While I didn't win any awards in 2023, I was proud to have contributed to Shoobs receiving it's first ever award nominations from Music Week and the LIVE Awards. While we didn't win, I attended both award shows as well as my favorite UK industry award show, Music Week 's Women in Music Awards where Sinead O'Connor's daughter, Roisin Waters, brought an entire room to tears during the tribute to her late mother.

Board Member:

As a Black woman, the idea of joining an organization's board was something for the ivy league elite, rather than for a person like me. So, I was incredibly proud to be welcomed onto 3 music industry boards this year which has exposed me to a new level of corporate governance, a deeper understanding of fundraising & annual budgets, organizational structures, and governmental affairs. Despite sometimes feeling a bit over my head (especially when it comes to UK politics!), I've been able to contribute my expertise in marketing, data, DE&I, Black music and my international experience to board conversations.

I am Vice Chair for Keychange US , a organisation focused on empowering gender minorities in the music industry modeled after the groundbreaking original Keychange organization that already operates in Europe and Canada.

I've also joined the board of Independent Venue Week , which is 7-day celebration of independent music & arts venues within the UK. 2024 is from Jan 29th to Feb 4th with 100+ venues across the UK participating. I also joined the UK's LIVE (Live music Industry Venues and Entertainment) Board as a co-opted member.

Public Speaking & Press:

Speaking:

Last year I did 23 talks and promised myself I'd do less this year. Technically, I did, as I did 21 😅 but I did stay a lot more local for my own sanity so my only out of country IRL talks were 2x in the US.

Some of my highlights for the year include:

• Getting back to SXSW for the first time in a decade where I hosted an event for women in tech with Boostlingo and sat on a panel about raising capital with Investable .
• Speaking on a panel about Women in Tech at THE Abbey Road Studios
• Doing my first talk about personal finance as a creative executive at the first annual jump.global summit.

Press:

I had 2 more press features in 2023 than 2022 mostly due to my 3 board appointments (though it never ever gets old to be mentioned in Billboard & Music Week) but some other highlights include:

• First feature in Forbes discussing breaking into the entertainment
• Writing a piece for Technical.ly (a tech publication that focuses on the mid-Atlantic!) about growing up in Baltimore wanting to be in the music industry without a feasible path forward, thus years later starting Measure of Music.
• Coverage in Music Ally about the music industry transparency project I'm working on with a group of woman that we've dubbed "The Music Workforce".

You can see all my speaking, awards & press on my website.

Giving Back:

I outlined above my board roles which I do consider a way of giving back but outside of that here are a few ways I tried to help others in 2023.

Measure of Music:

Of course, I held my virtual music, tech & data conference and hackathon, Measure of Music 2023, the third year of the program. (Reminder, registration is open for year 4):

We raised $15K more than 2022, with almost $40,000 from sponsors allowing us to pay our (majority minority in race & gender) speakers and our weekend workers for the 2nd year. (Big thank you, as always, to the jump.global team for their continued sponsorship support!).

Mentoring & Advising:

I switched from one on one mentoring meetings to small group mentoring meetings this year after some public deliberating on how best to approach time management. I talked with 26 people in 2023 about their career as executives or artists. It's so amazing to look back on people I spoke with in years past that are absolutely thriving now in their career. If you'd like to chat with me, you can grab a time here:

Other Activities:

• Continuing to post my bi-weekly round up of jobs on LinkedIn
• I concluded my one year tenure as the UK Director for gender minorities in music community, shesaid.so in March 2023.
• Started "The Music Workforce" an initiative for music executives kicked off with a salary transparency project
• My husband & I continue to make charity contributions to organisations we believe in.
• Continued to contribute to my LinkedIn newsletter "High Hopes & Misery Business" with posts about artist development, community building, work/life balance and more.

Money Earned & Saved:

As always to quote myself from previous years: "I add this because I don't think most people benefit from not talking about money."

2023 I grossed up with about the same income as 2022 (give or take the GBP to USD exchange rate). Though I didn't have the LinkedIn Accelerator Programme grant money, I did have more money from Measure of Music which more than offset that. I should note that my net is substantially lower than my gross because I don't make a profit from Measure of Music.

My husband & I increased our combined savings/retirement contributions from 20% to 25% plus a big month long trip (see below) cut into a few months of our usual savings and decreased our cash on hand for the latter part of the year, but we saw really great returns in the market for our investment portfolio leading to outsized gains for the year and keeping us on track for our overall financial goals.

I spend a lot of time thinking and talking about money. In fact, I checked this year and I spent 60+ hours in 2023 doing financial planning. I wrote a piece about financial literacy for US & UK a few years back that can give me insights into our investment strategies:

Health & Work/Life Balance

Donated Bone Marrow: I spent the last few weeks of 2023 finally not taking my health for granted recovering from donating bone marrow to my cousin. For the first time in as long as I can remember I actually completely disconnected from work. I hate that it takes a night at a hospital to achieve that but really made me reexamine what work/life balance really needs to look like to be sustainable. I also deeply encourage anyone under 40 (especially people of color) to join the bone marrow registry. I wrote more about that here:

Media:

As always, this is a great time to remind everyone to be proactive about diversifying their media consumption. Here's a piece I wrote in 2020 about that:

Music:

I'm bringing back my End of Year list for 2023:

First of all, Raye's "Escapism." is a perfect pop song. Outside of that, shouting out music from other women of color I loved in 2023: Joy Oladokun, Noname, SZA, Janelle Monae, Meet Me @ The Alter, Flyana Boss (extra nod for being the rap girlies having the most fun in 2023).

TV:

Some shows I loved this year (co-)starring people of color include: I'm a Virgo, Rap Sh!t, Sex Education, Dreaming Whilst Black, Starstruck, The Bear, Never Have I Ever, The Last Of Us, Harlem, Queen Charlotte, Abbott Elementary, Beef, Wu-Tang: An American Saga.

(Obviously, gotta shout out Quinta Brunson for being the first Black woman to win for Lead Actress at the Emmys in a Comedy in 40 years!)

Other shows I loved this year: Succession, Ted Lasso, The Great, Daisy Jones & The Six, For All Mankind, Jury Duty, Lessons in Chemistry

Travel:

I added a whole section to my infographic this year for travel because it's really the only "hobby" that I have.

In 2023, I went to Asia for the first time with a month long trip including a road trip on the East coast of Australia, a train trip through Indonesia, and time spent in Singapore and Malaysia. While I worked very silly hours, working remotely allowed this trip to be possible and I'm grateful for that flexibility.

The other thing that made this possible was amassing credit card points to redeem for hotels and most importantly, airline travel. My husband & I combined redeemed 672K British Airways points to facilitate our travels. In the future, I'd love to talk more about how this is done, but that's for down the line. In the meantime, I wrote a Twitter thread about it this year after booking our Asia trip.

Outside of trips to NYC, LA and Austin, the only work travel I did this year was local with train trips in the UK to cities like Brighton and Leicester.

New countries this year for me were Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, and Albania. Which puts me at 39 countries, so I'm eager to see what country is #40.

I also maintain a travel blog (but haven't gotten around to documenting the AU/Asia trip just yet!).

Visitors:

On the flip side of travel, in terms of visitors, we had out guest room filled 80 days in 2023. Grateful to have so many friends and family members visit us in the London last year but happy to have a much slower Winter season ahead. 😂

Reflecting on 2023:

I think 2023 was a year of table setting and laying some of the foundation for what I see my future personally & professionally looking like from joining 3 music industry boards, my first mention in Forbes, to doing my first talk on personal finance, I found strategic ways to incorporate my priorities into my life and I'm looking forward to what that means for 2024 and beyond.

Infographic Data Sources:

• Piktochart: Infographic Design (referral link)
• RescueTime: Track your screen time, program/website usage across all devices (referral link)
• Google Location History: Track your GPS location at all times
• Last.fm: Track your music & podcast consumption
• Exist: Bring everything together! (referral link)
• Trakt: Track your TV & movie consumption.

Back in early 2021, I wrote an accompany blog on how to track everything, so if you want to be more conscious about your consumption next year, check it out:

Previous Years End of Year Wrap Ups:

And Finally, The Numbers: