The Five Percent

Jamie Baker is a sound designer, audio engineer, musician, and educator with over 35 years of experience in professional audio. Currently based in Savannah, Georgia, with over 25 years of work  behind her in the NYC post-production sound community, she specializes in post sound and audio education.

Joan Hammel is a Chicagoland-based singer, songwriter, and producer with over three decades of experience in both live and recorded audio. As the founder of Paxton Productions, Joan’s work spans performance, production, and engineering, rooted in a lifelong commitment to music and storytelling.

Jessica Thompson has dedicated her career to the art and science of sound. As a mastering, restoration, and preservation engineer and founder of Jessica Thompson Audio, she has spent over ten years helping artists, labels, and archives bring recordings to life with precision, empathy, and deep musical understanding.

Skaivi is a Chicago-based singer, songwriter, music producer, and recording engineer with six years of experience working in recorded audio. An independent artist with entrepreneurial ambitions, she produces and engineers her own music and hopes to eventually establish a company encompassing all aspects of her creative and music-related work.

Hannah Brodrick is the Monitor Engineer for Florence + The Machine, where she combines technical expertise, RF knowledge, and a collaborative approach to deliver world-class performances night after night.

Although Helen spent her life writing songs, performing, and playing music, it wasn't until she was 28 and recording her first album in a Nashville studio that she discovered the creative possibilities of audio engineering. Watching the engineers shape the music from the other side of the glass revealed a new artistic path, one where...

For Erika Pursiainen, a career in live music wasn't something she discovered early in life—it was something she found through determination, curiosity, and a willingness to reinvent herself. Today, Erika works as a tour manager, merchandise manager, and stage manager, bringing more than a decade of experience to the road while helping artists and crews...

Betty Wright wasn’t just a powerhouse vocalist; she was a force in the music industry. She made history as the first Black woman to run her own label, Ms. B Records, proving that an independent artist could achieve mainstream success. In 1988, she became the first Black female artist to have a gold album (Mother...

Though British singer-songwriter Rosie Lowe has sustained a career as an artist for over a decade and has been recording her own music since her college days, it is with her August 2024 release Lover, Other that she took the lead on production, songwriting, and tracking. The result is a musical tapestry that crosses genres,...