Positivia
Ged McKenna - Creative Director
Ged is an experienced employee strategist. A Chartered Fellow of the CIPD, Ged has a Masters Degree in Employment Strategy and a Degree in Business Studies as well as being a qualified sports and performance coach.
For over 15 years Ged worked within LIPA (Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts) as Director of Flexible Learning and Head of Knowledge Transfer. Ged has designed and delivered communication, research & development consultancy programmes for a range of organisations, including The Environment Agency; The Beatles Story; The Merseyside Fire & Rescue Service; Liverpool Football Club; Radio City's Charitable wing 'Cash for Kids'; Trafford Borough Council; Knowsley Social Services; Liverpool John Moores University and CEWTEC.
Ged has also headed up a number of European transnational partnership projects and graduate business start-up initiatives on behaf of the National Council for Graduate Entrepreneurship.
Steve Levy - Director of Business Development
Steve has over 15 years experience in the entertainment space with a proven track record of managing and negotiating licensing agreements with stake-holders ranging from master rights holders, music publishers, film producers, television broadcasters, and digital services. In addition to managing artists, Steve has successfully managed the licensing departments for both Universal Records in the United Kingdom and BMG Music Publishing globally, where he also assumed global marketing responsibilities.
Steve's management career began in 1990 at Arista Records as A&R Manager working on multi-million selling UK artist projects and on international artist projects, including Witney Houston, Snap and Curtis Stigers.
In 1993, Steve moved to Chrysalis where he worked with legendary A&R guru, Chris Briggs (Robbie Williams) as Senior A&R at the satellite label, Compulsion Records.
At Universal Records in 2000, as Head of Film and TV Licensing and UK Soundtracks, Steve discovered his true calling - licensing music to all types of media (film, tv, advertising, new media and brands direct). Under his tenure the Department achieved over 25% growth in 3 years. At this time he also started the Universal UK soundtrack label, signing the soundtrack rights to Guy Ritchie's 'Snatch' (selling over 350,000 copies) as well as other UK film soundtracks such as 'The Hole' and 'Very Annie Mary'.
In 2003, Steve took up the newly created post of Director of Global Marketing at BMG Music Publishing International. In his role he guided the global marketing and business development strategy for promoting, marketing and licensing BMG's substantial artist/writer and catalogue roster, including amongst others, Coldplay, the Bee Gees, The Cure and Robbie Williams. He also had responsibility for key broadcaster deals, including the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and 5. By the time of the merger to Universal Music in 2007 his department had achieved commercial growth of over 40% under his leadership.
Since 2008, Steve has been running a marketing/licensing consultancy: some recent clients have included BMG Chrysalis, The Liverpool Culture Company, Jim Kerr (Simple Minds) and he is also working in the mobile marketing space with Mercury Mobile Services.
