From The Mailroom To The Top: Q’s With ICM’s Robert Gibbs, The First Black Head Of Music For A Major Agency

Robert Gibbs
 – Robert Gibbs

Robert Gibbs isn’t one to blow his own horn, but becoming the first Black head of music for a major agency is no small breakthrough. It can be argued it should have happened long ago, but somebody has to be first and few are better equipped and prepared for the role. He started at a small boutique agency before moving to CAA, where he was initially on agent Dennis Ashley’s desk without having gone through the then-typical mailroom route. But tradition was tradition, and Gibbs may have the distinction of being the only music agent ever to have been moved on a desk then to the mailroom, before becoming an agent in 2004. Eventually, he and Ashley moved to ICM Partners, where they’ve remained for the last 14 years, and promoted together to Partner in 2016. ICM Partners is known as a forward-looking agency when it comes to diversity and inclusion, and in 2017 announced an initiative to have 50-50 gender parity by 2020 – a goal it realized a year early. At the same time, CEO Chris Silbermann was looking to bring Gibbs up in the ranks and appointed him Head of Contemporary Music in August, after only a short COVID-19 delay. And on Feb. 22, it was announced that Gibbs would become Head of Music with former Head of Worldwide Concerts Rob Prinz unexpectedly stepping down, opening a door for Silbermann to shuffle the executive deck and enable Gibbs to mark a personal and professional milestone, for himself and for the rest of the industry. 

Pollstar: Congratulations. You’ve come a long way from Dennis Ashley’s desk and the mailroom. What did having a mentor like Dennis teach you about the agency business?
Robert Gibbs: Dennis has been an incredible mentor to me. I owe him so much for taking a shot on me, always believing in me and bringing me with him to ICM when we left CAA. As a role model he showed me how to be generous with my time to help build other agents’ careers which helped prepare me for the role I have now. In many music departments, it’s a top-down system where there is a powerful leader and then a lot of agents doing their thing. What we have created at ICM are layers for people to step into leadership roles, get mentored from above but also be mentors to those coming up the line. That helps everyone both listen and be listened to and that creates a unique and excellent culture that I am proud to be a part of, and for me it all started with Dennis. 
And the formation of the Concerts Leadership Committee addresses this?
The leadership committee consists of two incredible young women – Yves C. Pierre and Jacqueline Reynolds-Drumm – along with Mitch Blackman and Ari Bernstein, who’s in our New York office. And it’s a good mix.
I think everyone in our department, and throughout the company, has been over the moon about these promotions and their new roles in helping us continue to improve and redefine the department. We’ve brought on a lot of new agents and the roster has grown considerably this past year. It really takes a village to make sure you’re covering all the bases on behalf of the clients, and having those cutting edge agents help us keep an eye on the entire music scene will be a great benefit to all we do. 
For our young people, whether assistants or coordinators or agents, to see a pathway to leadership is to be able to say, “I really want to be a part of that. I want to be a part of the fabric of continuing to redefine and grow this department.” So that’s really what it’s about.
What do you expect to accomplish in your new role?
One of my biggest goals is to continue to mentor and educate, because that’s a big part of our business. It’s a conversation that’s happening across all the agencies and one in particular where we’ve always tried to push the ball forward.
A lot of African-American kids, from all over the country, don’t know what an agent does. There’s not a ton of us in the agency world across film, TV or music. That’s starting to change and we still have a long way to go.
It starts with a commitment to the recruitment of motivated African-American candidates to seed into the ground floor. But then it’s about a commitment to mentoring. It’s not just saying I’m going to give you an opportunity to work here and then you’re just off on an island on your own. It takes everyone in the agency to spend the time to keep up the morale and motivation there because, again, it’s a new world for a lot of young folks.
How do you reach those young people if they don’t know there’s a place for them?
It’s getting out in front of these schools, not just HBCUs, but some of the major universities that have music or film or TV departments to educate them on what an agent does. I’m trying to kind of give a broad view, but what it means to me is setting up for the culture and the future of folks after me. 
Last year, we saw a lot of movement toward diversity with Black Lives Matter and the outpouring of support across industries. But ICM Partners was moving in that direction well before that. 
Before George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement started, [ICM Partners CEO] Chris Silbermann and I were talking in 2019 about my next step forward, my next role. And I mean many, many conversations. At the end of 2019 Chris decided on a target date for the announcement of my promotion to Head of Contemporary Music. Then the pandemic hit, the music stopped, and we decided it was best to take a beat. A couple of weeks before the George Floyd tradgedy occurred, Chris reached out to me and said, “Hey, we need to pick our conversation back up and get this figured out.” He is a leader that is forward thinking about diversity, and diversity all across the board, not just African-Americans, but women and other underrepresented groups. People like Lorrie Bartlett, who Chris promoted to become the first African-American Motion Picture department head and then board member at a major agency. For ICM, it’s authentic. It’s not like, “Hey, there’s a Black Lives Matter movement, so let’s go and promote this guy here.”  
So you were made Head of Contemporary Music in August, but now you’re moving up again. That was quick.
Yes. With Chris, this conversation was like, “Listen, we want to prepare you and get you lined up for that next step to department head of music. But I didn’t foresee Rob Prinz, who’s been an incredible leader and helped to transform our music department along with Mark [Siegel] and Steve [Levine] and those guys.When I got the call a couple of weeks ago, Chris says, “Remember our conversation back in 2019, and you were elevated in August. Well, things are moving quicker now. And I need you to step up to the plate. And I believe in you. And we’re going to go out here and win.”