SPECIAL GUESTS
Guest Speaker
LEE ANDERSON
Executive Vice President & Managing Executive, Wasserman Music
Agent Lee Anderson has been at the forefront of the dance and electronic music sector of the live music business for nearly 15 years. His innovative strategic guidance has driven large-scale Las Vegas residencies for top acts such as Zedd, Skrillex, and David Guetta, as well as unique touring properties like Skrillex's "Full Flex Express" Canadian railroad tour, "Takeover" full-week residencies in various global cities, Zedd’s “In the Park” festivals, and Disclosure's "Wild Life" event series.
A native of West Hartford, CT., who is fueled by four double espresso iced Americanos per day, Anderson opened his own concert production and marketing firm, Mixed Bag Productions, while studying marketing at Champlain College in Vermont in the early 2000s. He joined boutique dance music agency AM Only in 2007, rising to the level of vice president. AM Only was acquired by Paradigm in 2012 and came under the Paradigm name in 2017, where Anderson became a member of the Music Executive Group.
Anderson was heavily involved in Paradigm’s transition to Wasserman Music, where he again sits on the executive management team, oversees the agency’s genre group leaders and enhances its diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. Key among them are partnerships with Color of Change and the Black Music Action Coalition (BMAC), with initiatives including a music accelerator program kicking off at Tennessee State University in spring 2022 with plans to expand to other HBCUs in future years. The program provides students with an intensive curriculum in songwriting, copyrights, publishing, marketing, touring and publicity, with guest lectures from prominent industry executives and artists.
Anderson’s client roster also includes major stars from beyond the dance music world, including Cautious Clay, Oliver Tree, Alessia Cara, glaive, and Normani. He has been featured on Billboard's "40 Under 40," multiple times in its "Dance Power Players" lists, and in 2020 and 2022, was twice named to its music industry Power List; he was also named to Pollstar's "Impact 50" list in 2023. Anderson has also been nominated for Pollstar's Bobby Brooks Award for Agent of the Year. He serves on the board of non-profit Bridges For Music, which provides holistic education programs to enhance the creative potential of young people from underserved communities in South Africa.
When not immersed in his day job, the Connecticut and Brooklyn-based father of two owns a sports card retail business. His role models are “anyone who can balance a demanding career, and also be a great spouse and parent. Getting that right is important to me.”
Musical Guest
MICHAEL J. WOODARD
A phenomenally gifted vocalist, Michael J. Woodard matches his natural talent and radiant presence with a lifelong devotion to honing his artistry. As a kid growing up in Philadelphia, the singer/songwriter began self-recording and producing his own material, drawing inspiration from forward-thinking pop, classic R&B, and soul.
Based in Los Angeles, Woodard possesses a powerful musicality he partly credits to singing in church all throughout his childhood. Soon after discovering his undeniable vocal skills at the age of five, he began performing in plays around Philadelphia and seeking out singing opportunities in New York City, eventually taking the stage at the legendary Apollo Theater in Harlem. By the time he was 13, Woodard had sung at high-profile events such as the US Open and performed for Barack Obama when the former president visited Philadelphia in 2010. While further developing his vocal chops, he immersed himself in studying the craft of songwriting and created his own home studio, then started sharing his songs on social media. “Every day after school I’d come straight home and get on my piano and start working on my music,” Woodard recalls. “I started freshman year and kept it up all the way to college, and it really molded me as a songwriter and helped me figure out what kind of artist I wanted to be.”
After graduating from high school in 2016, Woodard headed to Los Angeles to attend Musicians Institute, but ached to enter the entertainment industry and start his journey. “I wanted to record, I wanted to perform,” he says. “I had this dream and I just wanted to go out there and make it all happen.” Luckily, he was part of a school that supported this dream. As he amassed a significant online following thanks to the songs he’d posted on platforms like SoundCloud and Instagram, Woodard was contacted by a producer for the newly revamped “American Idol”—a turn of events that quickly led to his competing on the show’s sixteenth season and emerging as a top-five contestant. Not long after the season ended, he inked his deal with Unsub Records (a Capitol Records subsidiary founded by pop superstar Katy Perry) and also landed the starring role in the critically acclaimed Netflix animated film Arlo the Alligator Boy.
Since signing with Unsub, Woodard has spent much of his time collaborating with some of the industry’s top producers and songwriters, gradually building up a fantastically eclectic body of work. “I’m definitely a genre-bender—I love pop music and gospel and R&B, but I also love Tina Turner and Queen and The Beatles,” he says. “My artistry is in my voice, and I bring that to whatever type of music I want to sing at any given moment.” Woodard proves to do that on his recently released debut EP, MJW1. He continues to break boundaries in sound and combine his eclectic voice with soulful melodies and big pop/R&B choruses with ethereal/dreamy production. Woodard also incorporated that voice to bring such life to the character Arlo, giving him a cute and mighty quirkiness with a beautiful voice and bright outlook on life.
Woodard’s hope is to transmit that joy to each of his listeners. “It’s really important to me to put out music that will uplift people,” he says. “All the songwriting comes from my heart and it’s my way of expressing the things I need to get off my chest, but the number-one goal is to give people hope—which I think is so necessary at a time like this. I just want to make everyone out there feel good and give them a hope.”