Introducing Rick Heffernan As Utopia Genesis Foundation’s New Head of Business Development

We are incredibly excited to announce that we are expanding the Utopia Genesis team! A warm welcome to our new Head of Business Development, Rick Heffernan. With over 18 years of music industry experience under his belt, we know Rick will lend a hand in helping the Utopia Genesis goal of achieving transparency and creativity throughout the music ecosystem.

Rick’s extensive background included co-founding Light On, where he’s worked with some of the world’s most recognizable brands and influential people, including Red Bull, Miller Beer, and Yandex, an opportunity that allowed for him to work closely alongside Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak.

In his new role as Head of Business Development, Rick will be responsible for leading collaborations across all facets of label relations and artist onboarding. He will also take a leadership role in coordinating strategic partnerships, product testing, and marketing efforts for our ecosystem. Moving forward into 2021, both Rick and Utopia’s goals will be to bring education and awareness to the music industry.

Get to Know Rick

“With regard to blockchain and tokenization, we’re on the frontier of what is effectively still a new category for the music industry and what will be an important tool moving forward. Innovation always meets resistance in one form or another so we want to amplify the pure benefits tokenisation has to offer artists, fans, independent labels, managers and all stakeholders. These benefits include creative freedom, transparency, 100% ownership over music rights, quick royalty stream distribution without intermediaries, a new merch category and active fan investment/participation amongst other wins.” — Rick Heffernan

• Currently listening to: I don’t tend to listen to specific artists per say, but more towards radio to get a broader scope of the industry. These are the current listens that are on all the time www.nts.live, www.everynoise.com, www.radiooooo.com, https://beatsinspace.net and www.rinse.fm
• Hobbies: Yoga, chess, retro video game emulators, kindle, swimming in the sea, drinking tea and watching the crypto space of course.
• Favorite Artists: Aphex Twin, Billie Holiday, Donny Hathaway, Yaeji, Bill Evans, Rosalia, Tyler The Creator, Theo Parrish, Larry Levan
• Favorite NFT: Pop Culture Dystopia collection By Filip Hodas

We are excited for Rick to take on his role as an essential leader and help guide Utopia’s development operations as we continue to grow!