Thriving As A Mom In The Music Business: ‘Owning That Role Is Really Important’

Though Women In Music President Nicole Barsalona grew up in the music business as the daughter of renowned agent Frank Barsalona and journalist / Atlantic Records executive June Barsalona, she didn’t see many women being encouraged to get into the industry on the executive level or artist side – especially those with children.

“I was literally told that if I got married and had kids, I would lose motivation,” Barsalona says. In 2009 she left the industry for two years, noting that at the time there was “no system where I could potentially bring a kid on the road if I were a tour manager.”
A handful of years later she attended a “Moms In Music” panel at South by Southwest featuring artists managers who were mothers – and “making it work.” The event inspired Barsalona to pursue artist management. As she says, “It was life-changing because I hadn’t seen that kind of representation.”

Parents on both sides of the industry are now making it work, from executives who are finding ways to balance their personal and professional lives or artists like Meghan Trainor (see cover story here) who are taking their families on tour.

Barsalona – who is the manager for artists Prateek Kuhad and Mark Wilkinson, as well as sitting on the board of Music Managers Forum – reflects on how the industry has evolved in the past 15 years and notes that when it comes to motherhood “owning that role is really important.” She adds that when she first got her start in the business in the early 2000s, it felt as though there wasn’t space for a life outside of the industry as nobody discussed their personal lives or families.

“I think the pandemic was the first time that I felt really confident in my motherhood because for the first time I was seeing my male colleagues on Zoom with their kids running around in the background … I thought I was the only one juggling,” Barsalona says.

That made her confident to set boundaries such as saying that between 2:30 and 5 p.m., she’s not available for meetings because that’s when she picks up her daughter from school. Barsalona adds that some of the times she’s felt most empowered is when her male colleagues set similar boundaries, like when a head of a label recently had to decline attending a client’s show so he could go to his kid’s sporting event.

Ali Harnell, President & Chief Strategy Officer at Live Nation Women, points out that certain companies in the industry offer benefits to parents such as Live Nation’s Roadie Babies program (covering travel expenses for employees’ children under 2 and one caretaker) as well as LN’s six months of parental leave – but that “the problem with maternal/paternal leave is that in our industry, it’s so 24/7 and so client-oriented that if you take that time off, you really do fear not getting back on the hamster wheel of it all.”

She adds, “As an industry and as a company, we should be looking at, even if it’s just chipping away a little bit at a time, how do you make it better, easier for women to thrive? … I believe that we can help break down some of these systems to help support not just women, but men, because at the end of the day, the old adage, if more men were at the kitchen table, more women could be at the boardroom table.”

One great example is the partnership between Becky Colwell – GM of Inglewood, California’s Kia Forum and VP of Music and Events at the Intuit Dome — and her husband, who is a stay-at-home dad to their 12-year-old daughter.

She explains that when they first moved across the U.S. from North Carolina to L.A. so she could manage the Greek Theatre, her husband had his own company. But with the move bringing about a lot of adjustments and their daughter being only 3 at the time, they decided if they could make it work financially, he’d be a stay-at-home dad for a year. Colwell adds, “He agreed, was super supportive, and we’ve just kind of kept that arrangement. I am incredibly lucky that he is available to do it because the hours [in the venue world] are wild.”

Colwell notes that while she feels “the responsibility of a 24-hour operation of a building” and the tug of always being available, that having children forces you to create boundaries for yourself. And she tries to encourage her “employees, whether they’re married with children or not, [to] try to find that balance.”

As far as the expectation, at least from the venue perspective, that employees be there from the beginning to the end of an event, which could be 18 to 20 hours, Colwell says, “I think we’re starting to see that not disappear but it’s OK to schedule shifts, to tag in and tag out …. I’ve definitely seen that in the past few years, changes in that direction. I’d love to see it more. And I think it will continue to evolve.”

Looking ahead, Women In Music is launching a workplace initiative in 2025 that’s going to highlight the best places to work for women in the industry including parental benefits and flexible work/life balance. Another initiative, already underway, is WIM Safer Spaces – focused on combatting harassment and abuse in music.

And Harnell says Live Nation Women is “working on some big stuff. Stay tuned and watch throughout 2025 for [what] we’re going to roll out.”

She adds, “I think there’s a lot of inspiration when you look at so many of the women today. [For example,] Lesley Olenik at Live Nation, mother of three. [She’s] unbelievable, promoting some of the biggest tours in the world and showing women that it may not be balanced all the time, but you can do it. And I think that representation is so critical. … There are organizations as well that are advocating hard [like] Moms in Music.”