PRS for Music CEO Andrea Czapary Martin has been honoured as Businesswoman Of The Year at Music Week's Women In Music Awards 2023.
The awards ceremony took place earlier today (10 November) at the Park Plaza Westminster Bridge in central London, where Andrea was celebrated by her fellow music industry peers and executives.
In her acceptance speech, Andrea, who was appointed as CEO of PRS for Music in 2019, credited her success to building a high-performing team of people who are richly diverse in their ability, gender, age, experience, neurodiversity and ethnicity.
She also thanked her father for building her resilience, confidence, determination and belief in herself, before adding: 'Women have the DNA and the skills we need to change business and cultures. Women are good at communication, interpersonal skills, collaboration, empathy and have emotional intelligence: these are all the competencies and great skills we need to transform businesses and cultures.
'Under my leadership PRS has thrived, with a high-performing, diverse team achieving year over year double-digit results with many proactive and positive initiatives. It was my ability to think differently, to surround myself with diversity of thought, that I believe drove those results and led to finding new solutions to old problems.'
PRS for Music has achieved major structural and cultural improvements under Andrea's leadership, leading to greater speed, transparency and accuracy in royalty distributions, alongside landmark financial results.
Her commitment to maximising the value of creators’ rights via her ambitious five-year plan to pay out £1 billion in royalties by 2026 is on track. In 2022, a record-breaking £836 million in royalties was paid out — a 23.5% increase on the previous year — while Andrea's pledge to keep organisational costs below 10% of income was realised four years ahead of schedule.
