Priceless Answers From Publishers: Chicks With Hits

Join Sooner for another Priceless Answers for Publisher's as we present Chicks With Hits. An all female independant group of collectively incredible publishers, all of which have placed songs with artists that went on to become hits! Read about three of these guests below.

Debbie Zavitson

Debbie spent 5 years as the senior director of A&R at Sony Records. She was then offered the Vice President of A&R position at Giant Records. She went on to sign Blake Shelton and later went on to manage his career and helped guide the early years of his success. Over the last 8 years, she's been building her own publishing and artist development company, Debbie Z Entertainment. She's had song cuts by Reba McEntire, Brooks & Dunn, Blake Shelton and many more.

Debbie is now expanding her company and joining forces with Canada's successful entrepreneur and award winning singer/songwriter Tara Shannon. Together, they are building their new publishing company Syndicut Music. Debbie now splits her time between Nashville and Canada, helping creatives hone their craft and achieve their goals.

Courtney Crist

Before she'd graduated college, Courtney landed a job with Lee Ann Womack and eventually took on road management and A&R for the Grammy-winning writer/artist. Courtney then joined the A&R staff at Frank Rogers Productions/Sea Gayle Music, where she worked with successful artists such as Brad Paisley, Trace Adkins, Darius Rucker, Josh Turner and Scotty McCreery.

Currently, she is on the AIMP Nashville Awards committee, Co-Chair of The Hometown Pub Takeover at the ACM Awards, W.O. Smith Advisory Board, and Co-Chair of The Music Row Ambassadors For St. Jude, which hosts events and raises money for the amazing hospital. She is the 2017 recipient of the AIMP Song Champion of the Year, voted on by her peers.

Stephanie Cox

Starting her career at Little Big Town Music, she learned the art of developing songwriters and identifying career-defining songs for artists. She spent the next decade honing her skills at Reba McEntire's Starstruck Entertainment where she was instrumental in establishing the hugely successful career of Grammy award-winning Mark D. Sanders's A&R at Capitol Records she was an integral part of the successful debut albums from Deana Carter and Trace Adkins then tapped to run the creative team at MCA Music and helped MCA secure ASCAP's prestigious Publisher of the Year award by signing Mark D. Sanders.

Currently serving as Senior Vice President of Creative Services for Kobalt Music, she works with the creative team to develop songwriters, promote Kobalt's roster of hit songwriters and artists, and expand the brand of their publishing partners. She was instrumental in the signing/development of writers and publishers such as Michael Hardy (who currently has multiple #1's as a writer and having success as a recording artist (HARDY) for Big Loud Records), Hayley McLean, and Plaid Flag Music (Riley Thomas and up-and-coming writer/artist, Mae Estes, among others).