Vice President, Licensing and Publishing - Nightingale-Conant Corporation - Chicago, Illinois
(2014-01)
Report to the CEO. Own licensing, rights, publishing, and retail channel strategy for the full catalog.
- Built and manage the company's largest licensing partnership, a multi-year agreement with a major influencer-led membership platform carrying a six-figure annual minimum guarantee, including authorization terms for AI-generated author content with approval rights retained.
- Developed a four-tier licensing partner framework that used the flagship deal as a template to target influencer-led subscription platforms, catalog-licensing platforms, distributed salesforce organizations, and AI persona and likeness licensees.
- Negotiating an animated-content license with a 2.8 million subscriber YouTube channel, structured around converting an existing unauthorized use into a retroactive paid license plus a forward-looking production deal.
- Re-engaging dormant international licensees, including a long-standing Tokyo-based partner.
- Secured an executed amendment appointing the company as authorized enforcement representative for a marquee estate, with delegated authority over platform complaints, cease-and-desist letters, domain disputes, and settlements up to $10,000.
- Led an enforcement campaign against monetized AI-generated content misusing a flagship author's voice and likeness.
- Directed a full rebuild of the corporate rights master using signed contracts as ground truth, covering 296 author contract files, and designed the normalized seven-tab data model behind it.
- Maintain and defend the company's trademark and archive rights position, including a registered mark on the catalog's best known phrase.
- Manage the company's most important retail relationship, including agreement amendments, promotional and merchandising nominations, metadata and categorization, and escalations.
- Built the evidentiary case on a 51% royalty revenue decline from peak, reconstructing partner projections against actual performance and documented commitments, and set the negotiating strategy around it.
- Negotiated placement of 334 titles into a subscription tier as a catalog stabilization and discovery measure.
- Analyzed a proposed agreement amendment clause by clause and required written clarification on backdating and a definitional change before signing.
- Manage a second distribution relationship at a 90% royalty rate and built the populated upload path to expand it from 183 to 642 titles.
- Authored a multi-retailer expansion strategy covering Google Play Books, Apple Books, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and library wholesalers, including canonical metadata, automated feed generation, and ISBN remediation across 642 titles.
- Launched a transcript-to-Kindle publishing line converting the audio archive into reading editions, with a multi-gate quality system and an established handoff to production.
- Launched a daily podcast built from a 1,353-episode radio archive, including automated screening, title and description generation, and distribution setup.
- Delivered two batches of AI-produced translated audiobook editions across five languages, including localized cover art and sequential ISBN administration.
- Restructured direct-to-consumer pricing and ran an A/B test repositioning the owned-purchase path ahead of the third-party retail link.
- Authored the four-pillar strategic plan presented to the CEO covering a DTC subscription product, AI-enabled new publishing from voice and likeness rights, content multiplication, and licensing optimization; prototyped the subscription app concept.
One-on-one coaching sales - Nightingale-Conant Corporation - Chicago, Illinois
(2008-01 - 2014-01)
Corporate sales - Nightingale-Conant Corporation - Chicago, Illinois
(2008-01 - 2014-01)
Customer service - Nightingale-Conant Corporation - Chicago, Illinois
(2008-01 - 2014-01)
