Four of the entertainment industry’s top executives joined forces at TheWrap’s Power Women Summit 2025 on Tuesday to get candid about leading a team through the turbulent times in the entertainment industry. And key to that leadership is radical candor.
“People talk about how we’re the product of waiting for the change,” Tana Nugent Jamieson, EVP & co-head of A+E Studios, said. “We’re living in the change. This is not going away.”
Jamieson was joined by 3 Arts Entertainment’s Olivia Metzger, AMC’s Amy Leasca and Sony Pictures’ Spring Aspers for the panel “Exec Corner: Dealmakers, Deciders, Disruptors” at TheWrap’s 2025 Power Women Summit, presented by STARZ #TakeTheLead.
The breakout session was standing room only as women packed in to learn the female executive playbook from the tenured professionals in a conversation moderated by TheWrap’s founder and editor-in-chief Sharon Waxman.
As the industry has faced consolidation and layoffs, the female executives said the key to success in the business is adaptability. The A+E Studios exec said earlier in her career adapting meant pivoting roles, but now she feels it’s about telling the truth.
“Be very straightforward with your team,” she said. “And frankly, be truthful to your talent too…I used to pretend, but now I’m like, ‘There’s two places potentially.’ You just have to be truthful.”
After decades of experience across NBC and CAA, Metzger took a risk and went out on her own with her own management company. She said her ability to adapt is going to take her into retirement.
“All I have done in the last seven months, since I transitioned to 3 Arts is walk into rooms with people who are half my age and say, I don’t understand, explain it to me,” Metzger added.
One attendee asked the panel how they have the confidence to say they don’t know without appearing behind or like a “dinosaur.” Jamieson said the key is confidence.
“I do think we have an opportunity in 2025, we should be mentoring young men,” Metzger said. “We have an obligation if we see young men, especially with whatever this crisis is young men are having right now … I think it’s up to us, not only to mentor the young women underneath us, but to also take the opportunity to take young men and show them what it means to be a good leader.”
The women on the panel also reflected on the mentors who pushed them to be where they are now. For the majority of the panelists, none of their mentors were women. Now, as sitting executives, they want to change that narrative.
“Maybe the generation before us, you saw the mediocrity and trying to counteract that by surrounding yourself with better, smarter people than yourself is so important,” AMC’s Leasca said. “This current leadership generation of females has done a really good job of surrounding themselves with people who challenge them.”
“Growing up through this industry on the TV side, you couldn’t be a voice of dissent,” she added. “Now I welcome that.”
The executive then pointed at her team seated in the front row, joking that they know more than anyone that she encourages pushback.
For Metzger, who started her career at NBC at 19 after she dropped out of college, none of her male superiors impressed her. “I literally thought I don’t want to grow up to be any of these people,” she said.
Decades later as a founder and executive, she looks for mentees and colleagues who are smarter than she is but also lead with kindness.
“This business is so hard. I need colleagues and clients who the room is rooting for,” she said. “I don’t care how good you are, you’re going to trip and fall. You want people who are willing to pick you back up…I surround myself with everybody who’s 100 times smarter than I am, and I’m not shy about that.”
Jamieson said she never had a female mentor coming up in the business and wanted to model something different for her team members: being kind, decisive and accessible.
For Sony Music’s Aspers, she does not want to leave the young men out of the mentorship conversation just because young women in the previous generation were not as included in the conversation.
“It’s up to us as women to not exclude guys. It’s not good,” Spring Aspers said. “To me as a leader, I want everybody at the table. It’s really important for us to create the next path, the way that we would want to be in it.”
Metzger added: “It’s up to us, not only to mentor the young women underneath us, but to also take the opportunity to take young men and show them what it means to be a good leader.”
TheWrap’s Power Women Summit presented by STARZ #TakeTheLead is the essential gathering of the most influential women across entertainment and media. The event aims to inspire and empower women across the landscape of their professional careers and personal lives. PWS provides one day of keynotes, panels, workshops and networking. For more information visit: thewrap.com/pws.
For all Power Women Summit 2025 coverage, click here.
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