Changing the Face of Sound. That simple slogan is the rally cry for the Women’s Audio Mission (WAM). With today (March 8th) being International Women’s Day, we’re taking a moment to recognize Women’s Audio Mission and their goal of broadening the presence of women in the audio industry.
A nonprofit organization, WAM’s mission is to challenge the status quo of the recording industry by encouraging women and girls of all ages to embrace the recording arts. Specifically, WAM seeks to shift the gender gap in the recording industry. To put it in perspective, less than 5% of the creators of music and media that’s consumed in daily life are women. Women’s Audio Mission seeks to change that.
Their San Francisco campus houses the only professional recording studio in the world built and run by women, and it’s drawing over 1,500 women and girls into the industry. Within the WAM curriculum, science and technology are blended with art and music to equip students with the tools they need to find employment in the creative technology fields. To date, over 500 women have landed paid positions with tech and entertainment powerhouses such as Google, Pixar, Doble, and Electronic Arts, to name a few.
Check out our interview with Terri Winston, founder and executive director of Women’s Audio Mission. Terri graduated with a degree in electrical engineering from Purdue University while also being a part of a band. She has been a part of the music and recording business for more than thirty years as a songwriter, composer, recording engineer, and producer. She has worked with the likes of David Bowie, John Mellencamp, Third Eye Blind, Throwing Muses, and PJ Harvey. During her time as a professor and director of the Sound Recording Arts Program at City College of San Francisco, she realized how few women were in the recording industry and felt she should do something to change that, and the Women’s Audio Mission was born.