Reni Adadevoh
WARNER MUSIC & BLACK HISTORY MONTH
Practicality and passion – finding the balance
Reni Adadevoh is the VP Legal and Business Affairs at Warner Music International. With two Ivy League degrees under her belt (and the student debt to go with them) Reni’s dreams of an editing career took a backseat to more practical considerations. She nonetheless found a way to satisfy her creative impulse by moving across to the music industry, which also led to an opportunity to fulfil her desire to move to London. As a Nigerian American living in the UK, Reni confronted issues of identity and race – issues which, in the context of the past few months, have taken on additional layers of meaning and emotion. Read on for these insights and for her unusual picks for desert island albums.
A graduate of both Yale and Harvard Law School, Reni Adadevoh remembers thinking that without getting into the best school possible, she would not be able to succeed. “It’s unreasonable [to think that] now, but that was somehow in my mind. So I worked very, very hard in high school to make myself a good candidate for Ivy League schools,” she explains. At Yale for her undergrad, she explored not just a variety of courses (chemical/electrical/ biomedical engineering before settling on a Psychology major) but also a variety of mindsets and thought processes. “What I value most about my undergrad education isn’t so much the academics but the fact that I was exposed to so many different types of people and different ways of thinking. I had a sheltered upbringing so I believe it expanded the way I think about the world in general,” Reni asserts.
Her next scholastic foray was either going to be grad school or law school, and as you can deduce, she opted for the latter. “The law school process was just much more straightforward and I knew I could get a job immediately after, whereas the career path in academia is less clear-cut,” she explains. However, Reni initially found the atmosphere at Harvard Law School challenging, failing to share her classmates’ (avid) interest in ranking their favourite Supreme Court Justices. Eventually, thanks to the large class size at Harvard, she was able to find other likeminded individuals who ultimately contributed to a good experience as she pursued her law degree. She was also finally able to realise her goal to live abroad during one summer: “I ended up in London and I loved it, and I always knew that I would want to come back eventually,” she says. While she would go on to work for a large, international law firm (Shearman & Sterling, LLP), a suitable opportunity for her to move across the pond did not arise.
Instead, following the 2008 financial crisis she took a partially-paid sabbatical and spent that time seriously evaluating her career goals and next steps. Readily acknowledging the importance of this pause for introspection, Reni notes, “It was during that time that I actually had a chance to really consider what I wanted to do long-term, rather than staying at the law firm and being a derivates lawyer.” Her deliberations weighed up her keen interest in editing, and a strong preference for a potential career as an editor, against the notinsignificant student debt she had amassed at law school. What makes Reni’s story so compelling is how honest she is regarding her decision to eschew her goal of becoming an editor, a clear passion of hers. On editing, she had this to say: “I’m very interested in the creative process of writing and I like being able to help people develop their stories and make those stories the best that they can be. For me, editing is another way to be close to the creative process and help people produce the best art they can.”
Nonetheless, as she bluntly put it, “Law school debt is real!” and she opted instead to find a way to use her law degree while still operating in a creative environment. What would her advice be to someone in a similar situation, having to choose between pursuing their passion and paying the bills? “I think there are some people whose career is very central to who they are, so I think for those people, they need to seriously pursue a career that reflects those passions. But for me it’s more about the environment that I’m in and that’s why I chose to be close to creativity,” she explains. Whichever category you fall into, she emphasizes the importance of taking the time to explore the possibility of pursuing your interests and passions, but without losing sight of the practical aspects. She put that into practice by seeking intellectual property law opportunities within Music, TV, and even Tech. However, she notes that ‘the people at Warner set it apart’ and made it her first choice, although she considered it somewhat of a long shot for her to get the position. As such, she also hatched a backup plan of continuing to work as a derivates lawyer but instead in London at Goldman Sachs.
“What I value most about my undergrad education isn’t so much the academics but the fact that I was exposed to so many different types of people and different ways of thinking. I had a sheltered upbringing so I believe it expanded the way I think about the world in general,”
She did (evidently) land the role at Warner-Elektra-Atlantic in the New York office, and resolved to put her dream of coming to London on hold. “I decided I would try to find some way to get to London but I did not know it would be a possibility at the time I came to Warner,” she explains. A vacancy later opened up at Warner Music International which would allow her to fulfil that goal and she found support in Paul Robinson and the head of the London international legal team at the time, as well as two colleagues who had previously made the move. Although born and raised in the US, Reni had never really felt American until she left those shores. “My parents are immigrants, and I think there is a general idea of who qualifies as an American and a lot of it can be quite race-based,” she notes. Reni soon realised that there were actually many aspects of American culture that she embodied, and even found herself defending Americans at times. Overall, the move led to Reni confronting and engaging with themes of race and identity, something which she describes as enlightening.
“It was very interesting to experience people seeing me as American first,” she says, “And it’s been great being in a position where I see different forms of Blackness, and the different ways people understand and approach Blackness within different cultures”. While she grew up in Birmingham, Alabama (historically a hotbed of civil rights activity), Reni’s experience was not necessarily typical as her upbringing insulated her from the more overt instances of racism. However, during her gap year between Yale and Harvard she worked with a non-profit organisation; their focus on the Jewish and Black communities in Alabama provided Reni with a solid foundation in discussing and confronting some very difficult topics. “Being prepared emotionally to discuss those issues with people that have different experiences than you, it was invaluable to have that so early in my life,” she reflects. Over the past few months, that skillset has unfortunately been put to much use.
When prompted, Reni shares eminently relatable insights into what made the George Floyd incident stand out to her among countless other examples of police brutality. “I specifically remember Eric Garner, and I remember how much that weighed on me when it happened. But I think to live your life day to day, sometimes you compartmentalise,” she explains. For various reasons she was unable to do this with George Floyd’s death, and she found herself fully confronted by the emotional weight of the traumatic incident. Moreover, the responses of some friends put a spotlight on the lack of understanding not just of race relations in the US, but of the issue of police brutality in particular. “This was the first time that some people understood that actually, all the police brutality we’ve been talking about for so long was not the fault of the person being brutalised. I found that there were a lot of people who had thought that the person had done something to deserve being treated that way by the police,” Reni says.
Despite the frustration, sadness, and anger inherent in these experiences, she remains hopeful that the level of engagement and attention currently evident are precursors of positive change. That is not to say that the music industry can rest on its laurels – “I think it’s great that artists and people in general within the industry are being more vocal about injustice and what needs to be done. But as long as it still exists, I don’t think that anyone can sit back and say ‘oh we’ve done enough,” Reni asserts. For those who are still seeking to fully absorb the racial and social issues at play, her advice is to engage with a friend with whom candid conversation is possible, and who has personal experience with these issues. “I think that people are able to connect more to how another human being feels, rather than reading something on a page and looking at statistics. You can digest [the latter] intellectually but there also has to be some kind of emotional connection in order to motivate most people,” she explains.
“I’m very interested in the creative process of writing and I like being able to help people develop their stories and make those stories the best that they can be.”
As we circle back to creative things and ask about her desert island playlist, we can’t help but be intrigued by Reni’s responses. By her own admission she has never been ‘an album person’ and has perhaps purchased three albums in her entire life (!). Her first choice is therefore a single track which never fails to lift her mood – How I Got Over by Aretha Franklin. She piques our interest further when she reveals that she organises her music by producers rather than by artists or genre. It calls to mind an earlier comment regarding her passion for the creative process: “When people ask, ‘what concert would you want to go to?’, I would rarely say I want to go to a concert. If I had the opportunity, I would much rather sit in a studio with a producer and observe their creative process.” Her selected compilations consist of the entire careers of Timbaland and Mark Ronson, as well as The Neptunes from the early 2000s. She finishes off in style with a Broadway music compilation, and the end result is a playlist that is eclectic and certainly never dull.