Each year for International Women’s Day, shesaid.so highlights a group of women and gender-expansive voices working across the music industry.
Selected through recommendations from our global community, this feature brings together artists, journalists, organisers and industry professionals whose work is making a meaningful impact across culture and the wider ecosystem.
For the 2026 edition, we invited a few of them to reflect on their journeys in music and share advice from their experiences so far — from protecting your vision to staying focused on your own path.
Chippy Nonstop
Chippy Nonstop got her name for a reason. She is an audacious, undeniable party starter with a penchant for travelling the world and always bringing her unique energy. As a sound selector she makes the dance floor shake, but there’s much more to the story. Chippy is a DJ, rapper, songwriter, writer, producer, activist and organizer of community events. She is of Indian descent, but is more of a cultural nomad; she was born in Dubai, grew up in Zambia, has citizenship in Canada, lived in Los Angeles, Oakland, New York, and currently resides in Toronto after a very public deportation.
Chippy Nonstop is currently working on new music-related endeavors such as new music, touring globally, a party rave series called Pep Rally and a project called ‘Intersessions’, a sound initiative curated by and for women & the LGBTQ+ community. Chippy strives for balanced representation in music by producing these global workshops and her curation of Pep Rally events.
A piece of advice would you give to someone just entering the music industry?
Make a clear vision board of what you want and what you want to put out there into the world. Protect your vision, don't sell yourself short and make compromises of your ideals for the sake of getting ahead, everyone's journey is different so don't compare yourself to anyone else.
What piece of advice has kept you going during challenging times in your career?
if u CAN envision seeing yourself doing anything else you aren’t meant to do it .
CHIPPY NONSTOP on Instagram | Website
Heran Mamo
Heran Mamo is an award-winning Ethiopian American music and culture journalist. She recently served as the Senior R&B/Hip-Hop/Afrobeats Writer at Billboard, where she worked for six years. Heran believes in amplifying the voices of underserved and overlooked communities within the industry through authentic, diverse reporting on Black music and culture for the diaspora.
She's written cover stories on The Weeknd, Burna Boy, SZA, Ice Spice, Metro Boomin, PARTYNEXTDOOR, Tyla and Tems. She's moderated panels at AFRICON and the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, California; Billboard MusicCon in Las Vegas, Nevada; SXSW in Austin, Texas; and Reeperbahn Festival in Hamburg, Germany. And Heran has made appearances on Good Morning America, CBS News, Entertainment Tonight and NPR.
What has been your proudest moment in your career so far?
I made the Forbes 30 Under 30 list this year! That was a professional dream come true.
What piece of advice has kept you going during challenging times in your career?
Comparison is the thief of joy. It's so hard to be proud of what you've accomplished or feel motivated to keep going because you're constantly looking at this person's success or what that person is doing. Put your blinders on and stay focused on your own career path because no one else can replicate it.
Heran Mamo on Instagram | Website
LYZZA
LYZZA is a multidisciplinary artist and cultural organiser working across sound, film and performance, treating sound as a tool for transformation, collective experience and radical expression. Emerging as a self-made teenage DJ and producer, her 2017 debut EP Powerplay came to be recognised as a foundational release in what became known as deconstructed club, helping shape a sound that gained wider visibility nearly a decade later. That same year she founded XXX Network (f.k.a. X3), the Netherlands’ first safe(-r) space club platform and educational initiative, eventually helping lawmakers and other organisers within the Dutch festival and club landscape formulate new visions and influence nationwide policy on night culture.
LYZZA and her collective were inducted into the Amsterdam City Archives for their contributions to the city’s nightlife. Her work has drawn collaborations and support from artists including SOPHIE, Nicolas Jaar, and the estate of Lee “Scratch” Perry. Her critically acclaimed mixtape MOSQUITO was accompanied by a self-written and scored film now archived by The Criterion Collection. In recent years she composed the score for Third World: The Bottom Dimension, an award-winning interactive video game and touring exhibition at Serpentine Galleries, where her audio work made her the youngest artist exhibited. In 2024, she was named Mixmag’s Producer of the Year, recognizing her ability to shape sound into something immediate, intimate, and massive all at once.
A piece of advice would you give to someone just entering the music industry?
Music is not something you casually choose. It chooses you. If you feel called, treat it as a real extension of yourself and answer it fully.There will be moments when you feel lost. The industry can be exhausting, confusing, and sometimes disappointing. You may question everything and wonder if you should walk away.
But if music is truly yours, you stay almost irrationally and delusionally because you know the connection is real. Commit to giving it your time, your patience, and your belief. The longer you stay devoted, the more you will experience moments of true resonance and moments where everything aligns and reminds you why you began. Over time, those moments grow and they begin to shape your life and everything will feel like it's worth it.
LYZZA on Instagram | Tiktok | Connect with LYZZA
Sam Mobarek
Sam Mobarek is a marketing leader and brand expert with over two decades of success in gaining cultural recognition for her clients through a bespoke approach to building loyal communities and lasting legacies.
Most recently serving as Head of Major Recordings — Warner Records' flagship dance label and home to artists including Sam Gellaitry, PARISI, TSHA, 33 Below, J. Worra, and The Blessed Madonna — Sam is now evolving Mob Creative, her full-service marketing agency, into a new chapter dedicated to closing the gap between independent artists and the resources, strategy, and brand-building infrastructure that move careers forward. Mob
Creative has previously worked with renowned brands including BMG, Disney, Atari, Unidisc Records, MK, and Maya Jane Coles.
What has been your proudest moment in your career so far?
Honestly it's less one moment and more a feeling I keep finding. 'White raver rafting' at Steve Aoki's Hammerstein Ballroom show in 2013. Hearing Kenya Grace's "Strangers" in a grocery store, a liquor store, and a clothing store all in the same day. Watching PARISI and Sam Gellaitry's live shows evolve and reveal just how uniquely talented they are. And now relaunching Mob Creative on my own terms, staying true to the culture first, artist first approach I've always believed in and held to when I built Major Recordings at Warner. It's a proud moment every time you bet on great art and get to watch it find its people.
A piece of advice you'd give to someone just entering the music industry?
Never forget that your product is a person who took a real risk on something vulnerable. They didn't have to do this. Getting to the beating heart of why an artist makes their art is the actual job, and when you treat it that way, you'll be rewarded in your career and as a person. But don't forget to extend that same grace to yourself.