2026 Women Of Live: Carolyn Blackwood

Carolyn Blackwood
Sphere Entertainment Co. | Head of Sphere Studios

NO ARGUMENT HERE | “Stevie Nicks is a goddess.”

A standard question Pollstar asks of the Women of Live honorees is about their last job that wasn’t in live. For Sphere’s Carolyn Blackwood, that’s easier to remember than for many of her fellow honorees. Until she took the helm at Sphere Studios in June 2024, she’d never had a job in the business.

“Working with Josephine Vaccarello and our live bookings team is my first foray into this part of the industry after my career in film – it’s been incredible to work with artists and their teams to transform how people experience live entertainment,” she says.

It’s a bit odd to consider someone with a storied 25-plus-year career as a rookie, but Blackwood has treated her first 18 months or so with the eager mind of a beginner (it helps working with Hall of Famer Vaccarello, no doubt).

“The live industry moves fast, and the most successful people I know are the ones who combine confidence with preparation and knowledge. Learn every part of the business, from creative to finance to logistics,” she says.

She capped her film career with a stint as Warner Bros. Picture Group’s COO, where she was involved with some of the biggest movies of the millennium. And in her year-plus at Sphere, however, she’s truly seen — and led — what the technowonder on the Strip can do, with the success of a certain 1939 classic leading the way, selling more than 2.2 million tickets and generating more than $290 million in revenue.

“We launched ‘The Wizard of Oz at Sphere,’ which has completely redefined what an immersive experience can be, and on the live side, helped artists bring their visions to life at incredible scale,” she says. “From Backstreet Boys (the venue’s first pop act) to Kenny Chesney (the venue’s first country artist), it has been a year of firsts. At Sphere Studios, we continue to develop new technology and production workflows that merge visual storytelling with live performance in an unprecedented way.”

From traditional cinema to Sphere, Blackwood says her motivation has always been “championing creativity and helping artists realize ideas that seemed impossible” and Sphere gives her more tools than ever to achieve that goal.