Verifi Media

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About Verifi Media

With offices in London and New York, Verifi Media is a global leader in modern media rights data management services focused on empowering media creators through digital data innovation. Using modern tools like cloud computing and artificial intelligence, Verifi revolutionizes how media ownership and meta data is enhanced, corrected, shared and tracked across the supply chain, resulting in significantly better business decisions while enabling creators to be paid properly for their work. For more information, visit www.verifi.media.

Ken Umezaki – Co-Founder and CEO

Ken Umezaki is Co-Founder and CEO of Verifi Media, a media technology services company that empowers media creators to secure their rights within their creations and synchronize all updates and changes efficiently across the digital value chain, all at the speed of digital. In this role, Ken oversees all operations at Verifi, building a platform that enables artists and their teams to quickly and easily store, locate, correct, and share verified media metadata, ownership information, and underlying asset files with all stakeholders, including labels, publishers, distributors, DSPs, PROs, and CMOs. This ensures all parties always have the most up-to-date media data, key to powering innovation while enabling creators to be paid properly for their work.

Raised in Tokyo, Ken moved to the United States to study at Princeton University, where he graduated with a degree in Psychology, with a Mathematics minor.  His background and fluency in Japanese landed him a position on Wall Street, where he worked for over 20 years. In that time, he built and managed trading businesses at Kidder Peabody, Lehman Brothers and Neuberger Investment Management.

In 2009, Ken’s interests in music and the digital media transformation led him to found Digital Daruma, an investment firm specializing in digital music startups and developing-artist investing. The company has reviewed over 600 investment proposals from startups and artists, and invested in a number of promising companies, artists, and songwriters. He has co-founded three new companies in the last decade, including Verifi, formed in 2016, where he served as Chief Business Officer before taking over as CEO in 2018.

Over the course of his career, Ken has spoken at many of the biggest music-tech conferences in the world, including SXSW, the Music Biz conference, Digital Entertainment World, Mondo.NYC, the SF MusicTech Summit, the Future Music Forum, A2IM, the Dublin Tech Summit, Sónar+D, OMI, Music Tectonics, Slush, and more. He is also a major supporter of music education, including serving on the Board of Little Kids Rock, a national nonprofit working with public schools across the U.S. to restore, expand, and innovate music education, for over 10 years.

Ken is currently “parked” at his mid-Hudson Valley home in New York, where he lives with his wife. In his free time, Ken enjoys golf, tennis, and cycling. He also currently plays bass in the rock band Fifth of Bourbon, and has been performing for over 35 years.

Chloe Johnson – Head of Client Relations and Strategic Partnerships

Chloe Johnson is Head of Client Relations and Strategic Partnerships at Verifi Media, a global leader in modern media rights data management services. In this role, she is responsible for guiding and managing successful projects with major label, publisher, and distributor clients, with her efforts leading to the successful close of a $3 million funding round for the company. Chloe is also a musician, opera singer, educator, and entrepreneur, having founded Extra Magic Consulting, where she has worked with over 200 artists of all sizes and raised over $1 million collectively in direct-to-fan campaigns.

Based in London, U.K., Chloe’s life in music began as a classically trained performer, earning her Bachelor’s degree from Bangor University and Master’s degree from the University of York, where she focused on opera singing. After graduating, she returned to the U.S. to work with the Cape Cod Symphony Orchestra, where she taught singing and served as Registrar and Manager of their Falmouth campus. After meeting many frustrated musicians who needed help with the business side of the industry, she went back to school to earn a Professional Certificate in Artist Management from Berklee College of Music. That conviction to help artists was stoked by her next position as General Manager of the Regattabar Jazz Club in Cambridge, MA, leading her to complete a second Master’s degree in Music Business Management from the University of Westminster.

While working on her degree, Chloe worked directly with major labels and artist managers on direct-to-fan campaigns that brought her from the live music world into the supply chain world, joining Verifi Media in 2016 as Community & Social Media Marketing Manager. There, she established the bonds with the Verifi community that have guided her as she moved up the ranks at the company. As she climbed the Verifi ladder, Chloe started Extra Magic Consulting in January 2019, where she handles everything from website building, to merch design, to fulfillment solutions for her clients, which have included CHVRCHES, Jimmy Buffet, Rick Springfield, Sunflower Bean, Broods, Hinds, Dana Fuchs, Shelly Fairchild, Will Dailey, Thomas Rhett, Anya Marina, comedian Nikki Glaser, and the estate of Otis Redding. She currently maintains the company alongside her role at Verifi, focusing on a short roster of artists on new release campaigns. Chloe was promoted to Head of Client Relations and Strategic Partnerships at Verifi in April 2021. She has spoken at a variety of major music industry conferences, including A2IM Indie Week in New York City; The Great Escape conference in Brighton, U.K.; and the FastForward conference in Amsterdam.

In addition, Chloe is passionate about teaching, mentoring, and donating her time to good causes. She has served as an Artist Mentor at The Rattle Collective since 2018, and supports the mission of Little Kids Rock to expand the definition of music education beyond classical music to Pop, Rock, Hip-Hop, and other genres. She also volunteers for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, one of the largest environmental organizations in the world, and was an active member of Women in Music (WIM) while living in Boston.

Chloe lives in London with her dog, Draco. In her free time, she writes and records music and takes part in other creative writing projects. She also created and hosted the “Khodarma” podcast about nature conservation and meditation during the COVID-19 pandemic.