Entertainment industry veteran Wendy Pearl’s background as a journalist and publicist provides her a unique perspective from both ends of the media spectrum. Her career history includes posts as a music director at a country radio station in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, a reporter for CNN’s start-up Miami bureau, and nearly a decade as a journalist/columnist with The Miami Herald, where she participated in the paper’s Pulitzer-winning coverage.

Since arriving in Nashville in 1992, Pearl has worked in publicity and artist development at Sony Music and Asylum Records. She ran the Nashville PR department at cable network TNN and worked on numerous music specials and syndicated programs before joining the Country Music Association (CMA) in 2000, where she had media oversight of cornerstone events including the acclaimed CMA Awards.

With a desire for new challenges, she launched Wendy Pearl Public Relations in January 2017 with clients including the Academy of Country Music, CMA, the Georgia Music Foundation, RodeoHouston, T.J. Martell Foundation, and more. In September 2018, Pearl was offered the opportunity to return to her industry roots as VP/Media at Sony Music Nashville, where she contributed to SMN being named No. 1 label of the year in 2019 by Billboard – a first since 2011. Following a department restructure, Pearl left SMN in November 2019 to relaunch Wendy Pearl Public Relations bringing fresh ideas and proven results to advance the causes and music she loves.

Her work includes:

• Contributing a Patty Loveless essay to Woman Walk The Line: How The Women of Country Music Changed Our Lives, an anthology of 27 female writers named one of No Depression’s Top 10 Books of 2017 and Publisher’s Weekly Fall 2017 “Music Books To Look For.”
• Creating and executing a CBS affiliate relations plan for the ACM Awards Red Carpet (2018).
• Generating awareness for the introduction of a new, state-of-the-art concert stage during the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo (2018).
• Elevating the profile of the annual CMA Awards including announcing the nominees live on “Good Morning America,” producing the gold-standard CMA Awards Red Carpet, and the global release in 2016 of the “Forever Country” all-star, music video celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the CMA Awards.
• Winning the prestigious Award of Excellence from the International Association of Business Communicators for CMA’s quarterly CMA Close Up magazine.
• Media oversight of CMA Music Festival, a four-day event which attracts 88,000 people from around the world to Nashville and the companion three-hour network television special.
• The expansion of the popular CMA Songwriters Series franchise to public television on “Front & Center.”
• Creating national awareness for the CMA Foundation, which provides funding for music education programs serving disadvantaged children across the country.
• Advancing numerous CMA initiatives including international outreach, industry honors, and the announcement of inductees for the coveted Country Music Hall of Fame.