SmallBizResource Blog -- Software

Wednesday's Woman: A Rocker Girl's Journey to Tech CEO

Posted by Naomi Grossman Wednesday, May 28, 2008, 12:12 PM ET

Who says rock and roll girls can't have high tech careers? Certainly not Cyndee Sugra, CEO of Studio 7 Media -- a tech development and design firm -- by day and lead guitarist for ElectroSonic, an indie rock band, by night. Sugra's career path, from full time rock musician to running a small business to doing both, demonstrates one woman's ability to integrate her diverse talents to ensure that she can indeed have it all.

As is the case with many creative souls, Sugra's indie rock career began before she realized it and by the tender age of 11 she was playing lead guitar in garage bands and five years later was signed to an indie rock label.

By the age of 18, Sugra was out of the band but parlayed the lessons she learned as a rock musician – marketing, promotion, and the value of her own creativity – into jobs on the other side of the fence. She landed in BMG's marketing department just as Internet marketing was taking off and Sugra was not afraid the fully embrace the new technology – at BMG and then in other companies in the music industry -- a theme that would define the rest of her career.

The dotcom bust provided Sugra with the excuse she was looking for all along, to start her own small business. Studio 7 Media started, innocently enough, as a web design and development firm, but Sugra's penchant for embracing new technology led her into a relationship with Fox and a risky (read: self funded) software development project for Fox's home entertainment division.

Fox liked what they saw and came back for more. So has Fisher Price, Nike, and Disney.

It's all thanks to the rocker girl approach to tech: Said Sugra, "We set ourselves apart by focusing on creative technology projects that no one knows what to do with. There is a risk factor in taking these projects on, but we say failure is not an option."

Same goes for Sugra's music career. She is currently working on an album with ElectroSonic, which is a mix, appropriately enough, of electronica and rock.

Want to read more about Sugra? Check out her story on bMighty.com.

Previous Wednesday's Woman articles:
>> Why So Many Women Are Bolting From Tech
>> Meet TodaysMama CEO Rachael Herrscher

Wednesday's Woman is a new feature you can look forward to reading smack-dab in the middle of each week. Look for more profiles, trends, research and other topics of interest to today's community of hard-working, small-business women. As always, send me your ideas.

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