As Danielle Cuoco departs Equalizer, heading towards the next steps of her career as a music business professional, I asked her to reflect upon the last few months of her internship - what projects she found valuable, things that she learned that she didn’t expect, skills that she’s taking into her future endeavors.

I walked into the New Era of Women in Music panel expecting to hear about opportunities. I thought it would focus on progress, empowerment, and the ways women are thriving in today’s music industry. If I’m being honest, I also walked in a bit skeptical. I’ve heard those conversations before, and I wasn’t sure how much of it would actually feel real.

Griffin O’Neill recently joined the Equalizer team as a summer intern, and was immediately tasked with digging into data and rights research for some indie artists. This is the same type of publishing ownership research that I had to do early in my career and, although there are more public databases to search than there were back then, many of the same problems with identifying ownership still persist decades later.