rights workshop staff
BROOKE WENTZBrooke Wentz is a seasoned music rights executive who has more than twenty years experience working in the television, cable, film and recording industries, and gives frequent seminars on music rights and copyright issues. She headed up the music department for the ESPN networks and was Manager A&R Administration for Arista Records. She is also a critically acclaimed world music record producer, in which she received a Billboard award for the box set "Global Meditation" and recognition from Hilary Clinton for “Global Divas”, produced for the 1996 Third World Conference on Women. She owned her own record label, Juna, and was music producer for "Times Square 2000,” New York City's 24-hour millennium celebration. As an on-air radio host of new music on NPR and related stations she interviewed hundreds of artists, composers and musicians, many which have been transcribed for publication. A native San Franciscan, Ms. Wentz is a board member of the Stern Grove Festival, and a member of the board of governors of NARAS. She holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and received her B.A. degree, magna cum laude, from Barnard College.
MARYAM SOLEIMANMaryam Soleiman is a legal consultant at the Rights Workshop and brings with her a deep understanding of the entertainment and music industry. She has worked at some of the leading entertainment law firms in Los Angeles, representing clients in music, motion picture, television and multimedia areas. Ms. Soleiman specializes in music licensing and music publishing administration, artist and producer contract negotiations and copyright law, as well as negotiating and drafting various other forms of entertainment contracts. In addition, she is an experienced liaison between artists, record companies, publishers and managers.
Prior to joining the Rights Workshop, Ms. Soleiman worked in-house for Live Nation where she assisted in maintaining and administering Live Nation's trademark and copyright assets. She holds a J.D. from California Western School of Law and a B.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles.
JIM LYNCHAfter an early career in music journalism and artist management, Jim Lynch found himself at The Kurt Weill Foundation, he immersed himself in the dual tracks of music and technology that would guide the rest of his career. In 1995 he sold his prepress company and moved to San Francisco, where he played a key role in systems architecture for Wells Fargo's Internet Banking.
At Liquid Audio, his team built online royalty reporting systems for all the major labels, and designed large-scale database systems for distributing music metadata to online storefronts. After Liquid, Lynch returned to Wells to build software for Private Client Services, and went on to build content acquisition systems at Gracenote. He started SynkLynk with Brooke Wentz in 2005, designing a system to utilize music and other media downloads as powerful marketing tools.
