Merlin Engage 2025 Alumni Interview: Patra Sinner, Jovana Medic
Merlin’s mentorship program, Engage, has just concluded its third cohort, pairing 30 female executives from across the independent music sector to support career development, leadership training, and valuable networking opportunities.
The six-month program includes monthly calls between mentors and mentees, peer support sessions, and skills-building workshops led by top-tier executive coach Miriam Meima. For mentor–mentee duo Patra Sinner, General Counsel at Symphonic, and Jovana Medic, Director of IDJTV/IDJDigital, the experience proved invaluable.
Medic says: “Leadership can be a lonely place, but with Patra, it wasn’t. Through sharing our experiences, I’ve seen that the challenges women face in this business are universal.”
Sinner added: “Even though Jovana is technically the mentee in this relationship, it felt more like an exchange — sharing our personal stories and experiences, and realizing that we’re both on the right path.”
Here, we speak to Medic and Sinner about what they gained from the program, the lessons they’ve learned throughout their careers, and why they feel optimistic about the future of gender diversity in the music business.
Q: Jovana, what is the most important thing you’ve learned from Patra throughout the mentorship?
Jovana: I learned to calm myself down. We are quite similar but different. Patra has such great energy and a calm approach to problems, I’m a little bit fiery. I learned from her that every problem has its own solution. You just need to not give up and work it out until it’s gone. I love that fighter mentality.
Q: Patra, was there anything you learned from Jovana?
Patra: From outward appearances, someone could see me in this role as General Counsel and think I’ve got it all under control, I have all the answers and the solutions. But sometimes it’s nice to look around and see, ‘Hey, there’s someone else who’s experiencing the same thing, they’re not backing down either, and I’m on the right path.’ We are doing what we need to do to advance ourselves in this business.
Q: Patra, what does mentorship mean to you? And what makes a mentoring relationship genuinely effective?
Patra: Mentorship has always been important to me and I think it’s because I started out with great mentors. After I graduated law school and went to my first law firm, I had some mentors who were very respected in the industry and gave me the confidence I needed to establish my career. Because that was given to me, it was important for me to pay that back to other people as I progressed. You get something out of seeing someone else whose shoes you’ve been in and helping them through to the other side of it. What I’ve always said to other lawyers in the mentee relationship is lead with heart, trust your gut, then follow that with logic and facts. That approach won’t fail you.
Q: Can you tell me about some of the shared obstacles and struggles you’ve faced in your respective careers?
Jovana: The universal problem with women in this business is the power of their voice. Things have changed, more women are employed in all kinds of positions, but we still have to empower our voice. I felt that when talking to Patra and the other girls from the mentorship.
Patra: We want to continue to lift each other up because we’re in this sisterhood of really understanding what each other has faced. Through Merlin doing a program like this to bring us together, we can have those conversations that say, ‘Hey, this is how I navigated this, this is how I handled this particular conversation, or this person’s actions’. We can give each other tools.
Q: What are some of the ways in which you both try and ensure your voices are heard in your respective roles today?
Patra: The word that I would use to describe both me and Jovana is tenacious. We’ve faced obstacles but we haven’t backed down from them and that’s the reason we are in the positions that we’re in. I feel like that personality type is what it takes to continue to move forward and advance in this business. You have to lead with heart and passion, no matter what obstacle you face. You know you’re there to do a job and you want to convey the advice, your position or that issue in a way that’s constructive and productive.
Q: Like you said, Jovana, things are changing in respect to gender equality in the music business with more women taking up senior positions. In what areas is there still work to be done?
Patra: This isn’t just the music industry but there needs to be more transparency around compensation structures so there is less of an inclination for there to be variations there. I’d also say more training around communication styles, not just between men and women, but culturally. Having a better understanding of that emotional aspect of leadership, how we engage with one another in a company or an industry as a whole and that there are natural differences, would be beneficial.
Jovana: Something that has always bothered me is that society can put gender on knowledge and skills. My knowledge and skills don’t have a gender and we don’t have to communicate in that way. I don’t see the difference. We need to be more open to that.
Q: Here’s a question for both of you: what are the biggest lessons you’ve learned across your respective careers that might help up and coming executives?
Patra: Don’t take no. When you’re leading with heart, gut and instincts, and following that with facts and logic, you’re still going to get no. You’re going to get pushback, you’re going to face challenges, but if you’re leading with that process, you have a reason to stand that position. Especially in the legal environment, sometimes the advice is not necessarily welcome on the other side, so you back up and find another way to present it to meet that person where they stand. And like Jovana was saying, you stay calm in that process.
Jovana: My biggest lesson is you don’t have to prove yourself through exhaustion. That’s something my best friend who I work with always tells me. Me being 300% on every project doesn’t mean that it’s more efficient than when I’m on 100%. I need to also take care of myself.
Q: What’s the single best piece of career advice you’ve ever been given and who did that come from?
Jovana: It came from myself, from the future! Own the room before you speak. Before every meeting, I have that in mind.
Patra: One of my first mentors in the legal world said, ‘Always be more prepared than the other side’. You have to know the facts, the case, and if you’re prepared, you’re able to pivot in any situation. You need to be able to read the room and know, okay, my position is not landing very well here, I need to figure out a different way to present this. It’s about being very observational about your surroundings. That comes from being in litigation before I ended up in the position I’m in now.
Q: Another question for both of you: the Engage program is designed to empower the next generation of female leaders within Merlin’s independent community. How do you both define good leadership?
Jovana: As a leader, my task is to see the good qualities and extract the best skills in my team and not to point the finger in the areas they are perhaps not so good in. I’m big on transparency in my way of working, I lean on decisiveness under uncertainty, and always try and have the courage to take a risk. I always did everything by myself and I’m the kind of person that needs to track everything, like three times, that other people do. The biggest lesson for me as a team leader is to trust my team and be thankful for the work they are doing. I also want my team to feel like they are in a safe place for making mistakes. It’s quite important for them to acknowledge their mistakes, to work on them and not be afraid of them.
Q: How about you, Patra?
Patra: I agree with everything Jovana just said. It leads to accountability and you can’t really have accountability if you don’t have clear leadership. When you set clear metrics, give your team the ability to meet those and then reward them when they do, that’s what creates great leadership. That results in a team that’s very clear about the expectations and how to get there, and one that has a voice in helping to frame and shape that. I’ve learned for myself that leaders don’t always have all the answers. It’s the team members who are there on the front lines, in the trenches, who have valuable information. You want to take their feedback and shape the metrics around that. That’s what leads to that accountability and the ability to delegate. I think it’s very hard for personality types like ours to delegate, because we have high expectations, but if you create that environment of accountability, we can get there.
Q: Final question — having been through the Merlin Engage program, how positive do you feel about the future health of the music business, especially when it comes to gender diversity?
Jovana: I’m always positive about it. I always have faith. I think we are going to be good.
Patra: We’re optimistic because we’re here. We’re optimistic because we have Merlin Engage and we see other female leaders just like us who we can have these conversations with. There are many others out there who are doing similar work and as long as we continue to nurture that and grow it, this optimism is appropriate.
