"Music and social justice are no strangers — in fact, they can work in perfect harmony,” Bono said in a statement following the announcement. “We’ll miss Deb at, but after helping the team raise more than $600 million for the fight against AIDS, she’ll always be part of the band and I look forward to seeing what she’ll do in her new role, cracking the ceiling and helping the Recording Academy crack open a new future in the process."
Dugan is the first female president of the Recording Academy since its official inception in 1957. Her appointment follows a contentious period for the Grammys presenters. The Grammys have been criticized for its lack of diversity concerning nominees and winners and a study released in 2018 highlighted the gender disparity. Ms. Dugan may also be under pressure to expand the viewership for the Grammys’ annual telecast. The audience for this year’s show, on CBS, its longtime network, was 19.9 million, slightly up from last year. But the numbers have been down from the first half of the decade, when the show routinely attracted more than 25 million viewers.She started her career as a Wall Street lawyer, was a record executive at EMI and is a former president of Disney Publishing Worldwide. She is also a co-chairwoman of The Moth, a series of storytelling events and radio programs. Since 2011, she has been the chief executive of Red, which, according to the organization, has generated more than $600 million to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria through the sale of branded products from companies like Apple, Gap and Starbucks.
“What I do is try to amplify many voices in a world that often crushes them,” she said. "I am just looking at this new opportunity as a service, how to be relevant and reflective of the artist community in a time of rapid change.”
“I think all the issues that Neil led to an important larger conversation and that is the conversation of course that we will have, about women and diversity in music, and where we take it and how we use this platform to affect positive change is very important to me,” Dugan said via Variety. “That’s one of the questions I’m most excited to answer in this job.”