Mar 3, 2021
This week’s episode features Lisa Ellis, Entertainment
Executive and Founder of Provenance Ventures, an integrated
multimedia production and entertainment company that creates,
develops, and produces content that champions untold stories from
underrepresented voices.
A University of Maryland and Harvard Business School Graduate,
Lisa has formerly held titles that include President and General
Group Manager of Sony Urban Music, Executive Vice President of Sony
Music Label Group and most recently, Global Head of Music at
SoundCloud. She has worked with some of the biggest names in music
including, John Legend, Maxwell, Nas, The Fugees, Mariah Carey,
Destiney’s Child and the list goes on.
Lisa was also ranked #3 in Billboard magazine’s “Most
Influential Women in Music 2006, 2007, and 2009, as well as ranked
#50 in Fast Company Magazine’s “100 Most Creative People in
Business” in 2011 and 2012.
With more than 25 years in the music industry under her belt,
she made the decision to pivot into film, founding Provenance
Ventures, combining her business acumen, previous experience
working on soundtracks for box office breaking films, and innate
passion for amplifying the untold stories of the Black
community and our history.
Listen as we discuss the challenges Lisa faced early in her
career as a Black woman promoting pop and rock music and
later overseeing the urban music genre, how she preserved
and landed countless chart topping, grammy nominated artists
and what drove her pivot from music to film.
She also gives us a deep dive into two incredible film
projects that she is executive producing, the first Never
Caught, which will be the film adaptation of the 2017 book,
"Never Caught: The Washingtons Relentless
Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge" by Erica Armstrong
Dunbar, and an upcoming HBO Limited Series titled, "Say
Their Names," which will examine the Grim
Sleeper murders, occurring over a 30-year period in which Black
girls and women were killed in a wave of unsolved murders in South
Los Angeles.