RAINMAKERS: FURTHER FUN FACTS ABOUT BIZ BIGWIGS

If these snapshots of three of the 16 luminaries featured in the upcoming fifth volume of Rainmakers don't pique your interest, you’re on the wrong website.

Interscope Geffen A&M EVP Co-Head of A&R Nicole Wyskoarko comes by her intense work ethic and passion for music honestly—both were inculcated in her from a young age. “I was born in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of L.A. and raised in the Inland Empire, about 60 miles east of L.A.,” she explains. “I grew up in a really strict household. My mom fled Communist Cuba as a teenaged political refugee. My dad was working-class second-generation Eastern European born in Brooklyn and raised in Queens. He put himself through college and medical school. Everything was about hard work, hitting the books, discipline. The message was strict work, hard academics―that’s how you’re going to survive. It’s absolutely ingrained in me. Those were the core values in our house. It was nonstop from both sides.”

Long before he was CBS’ Grammys guiding force―and that of all the Tiffany Network’s specials―Jack Sussman was a news guy. Deep in his heart, he still is. “I think anybody who comes out of the live-news business can do anything if they’re creative,” he says. “Doing live television on a daily basis brings you the kind of experience you don’t get from spending a year developing an idea, a month shooting it and another year editing it. When you know that the red light goes on at 11 o’clock every night or 7 o’clock every morning and you gotta deliver an hour or two of programming with a beginning, middle and end, it toughens you up. It makes you the kind of producer that not everybody can grow into.”

After a decade-long stint at Epic Records, where she served as SVP, head of business & legal affairs, Stephanie Yu was elevated to EVP in 2020 by label ruler Sylvia Rhone, whom Yu views as “a legend,” adding, “When I first met her, I was intimidated, because she is so well put together. She has always been so incredibly nice and supportive. I really owe so much of the trajectory of my career to her. Sylvia has given me support and boosted me up even without me asking, so that’s been incredibly important to my career and to my success. And she also gives me independence to make decisions. She has obviously had this incredible career, going from being an assistant to being the chairwoman of a major label, and it’s really an amazing story. To have Sylvia as an example is a wonderful thing.”

Stay tuned for more noteworthy excerpts from these biz-hitter profiles.