Vanessa Thomas

Vanessa is our music industry extraordinaire. Born and raised in Ottawa, she completed her undergraduate degree at Concordia and then relocated to California State University, Long Beach, where she completed her Master of  Fine Arts. Vanessa stayed in California for 15 years working in the music industry in various capacities, including VP of Marketing and Sales for a radio syndication company, and later headed up Sales and Marketing at an industry trade publication in San Francisco. In between she spent five years on the air as “Jo Thomas” in morning and afternoon radio in San Francisco, and as “Tonya” on “Hot Talk with Tonya” in Sacramento and worked both professionally in Comedy improv and Voice Over work.

She then moved back to Toronto to become SVP, Sales for Nielsen Music, North America for twelve years and then moved into the Digital music space, opening the Canadian office for streaming service, Songza. She later spent time running competitor Rdio, then headed up CARAS’ charity, MusiCounts.  Later in her career, she acted as Executive Director of the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame and she has inducted and celebrated some of Canada’s finest songwriters. Most recently working with a Music Finance company out of Florida, she is eager to get back into the world of the creative and bring her network to the magic of “e”.

Her outside passions include continuing her on air and voice over work, singing in bands, riding hundreds of kilometers on her road bike with her husband and seeing the world every day through the eyes of her two boys, Devin, 18 and Kaden, 17.