Libby Bush, Global Head of Media and Entertainment Partnerships at CAA
Interview with Libby Bush, Global Head of Media and Entertainment Partnerships at CAA
Libby Bush is the Global Head of Media and Entertainment Partnerships at CAA. Before joining one of Hollywood's most powerful agencies, she built her career across the NBA, WNBA, Disney, and Marvel then launched her own company, Tandem. In this conversation, Libby breaks down how a D1 lacrosse background shaped her approach to deal-making, what founding a company taught her that big organizations never could, and why the future of entertainment depends on brands and storytellers building together from day one.
AvA: A lot of early-career professionals feel intense pressure to “pick a lane” as fast as possible. Your career suggests optionality can actually be a form of power. How should people think about when to specialize, and when flexibility is the smarter long-term bet?
The pressure to pick a lane early is something I genuinely push back on when I talk to anyone early in their career journey.
When I started in sports, I wasn't thinking this is my forever identity. I was thinking, I want to understand how this business actually works. How do media rights get negotiated. How sponsorship dollars move. How leagues think about scarcity. I was collecting data points. And when I moved into film and TV, I was asking similar questions: how are shows made, what draws audiences, how do brands decide what's worth their money?
My curiosity across industries gave me perspective I could never have gotten by soley focusing just on one area. I think specialization becomes powerful once you understand what you're uniquely good at and you can't fully know that until you've seen enough of the world to recognize it. The flexibility wasn't a detour, in my opinion it was the research.
The last thing I'd say is embrace the process, not just the destination. A career isn't built in a moment; it's built through experience, relationships, failures, pivots, and time. None of that can be rushed. The people I've seen struggle most are the ones so fixated on the end goal that they miss everything being built along the way. There is real power in being patient with the process and trusting that clarity will come.
AvA: You started in sports before moving into TV and film. How did that background shape the way you think about leverage, value, and deal-making, and where do you still see that sports mindset show up in your work today?
Sports isn't just a chapter in my background; it's the lens I see everything through and just how I’m wired. I was an athlete from the age of 4 and played D1 lacrosse in college, and that experience shaped me in ways that still show up every single day.
I have an obsession with timing. I watched what happened when a team was in a championship run, the urgency, the power, the shift in momentum. It made me deeply sensitive to timing and see that if you wait, the leverage moves. I still think that way constantly. When a creator breaks out, that's a window. When a franchise is hot, that's a window. You have to know when to move and do it with pace.
Sports also shaped how I operate and handle pressure. I actually think I do some of my best work when the stakes are real. And it gave me a deep belief in team chemistry because I've seen firsthand how everything changes when the people around you are truly aligned, and that shows up in how I build teams and partnerships to this day.
AvA: What was the exact moment you realized staying comfortable inside large organizations was riskier than betting on yourself and launching Tandem?
It wasn't a dramatic moment honestly. There was no single lightning bolt or grand vision. I didn't wake up one day and decide I was going to be an entrepreneur, that wasn't even the language I was using at the time. It was the data.
The same way I approached every chapter of my career, collecting information, paying attention to patterns, I started noticing that the people who wanted to work with me kept surfacing the same unmet needs. I realized I could address those gaps in a way that was bigger and more effective from the outside than it ever could be from within someone else's structure.
I didn't build Tandem from a grand business plan. I built it by following what the market was already telling me, and I bet on myself to deliver against it. The athlete in me took over. I've been competing my whole life and that instinct doesn't leave you just because you're not on a field anymore. Once the evidence was clear enough, the decision became simple, stop analyzing and start playing to win, and that was Tandem . Not a perfectly constructed plan, but a well-informed bet on myself and a deep belief that I had something real to build.
AvA: Running your own company is often glamorized, but it’s a very different grind than operating inside massive ecosystems like the NBA, WNBA, Disney, or Marvel. What was the biggest culture shock of being a founder, and how did that experience ultimately make you a better operator now that you’re inside a platform like CAA?
The biggest shock was how exposed you are, and I mean that in every sense.
Inside a massive organization, the brand carries you. You walk in the door and Marvel or Disney, or the NBA has already done half the work. When you're a founder, you are the brand. If the deal doesn't close, it's on you. If payroll gets tight, it's on you. There's genuinely nowhere to hide, and what that does is force you to get brutally honest about what drives revenue, about where you're strong and about where you're not. That kind of honesty is uncomfortable but imperative when it's your name on everything.
What Tandem permanently gave me is a baseline I carry into everything I do now. That brutal honesty about my own strengths and blind spots didn't leave when I joined CAA, it sharpened me. It also gave me a sense of urgency that doesn't switch off, a deep respect for the platform and infrastructure I have access to, and a genuine understanding of what founders and creators are navigating when they walk in the room. I've been on that side of the table, and I know what's underneath the surface and I think that makes me a fundamentally different operator and partner than I would have been if I'd never taken that leap.
AvA: There are few things more important than timing. Looking back, how do you personally evaluate the difference between pursuing a genuinely great opportunity and getting pulled into something that’s just a distraction?
Timing is everything, and I've gotten it wrong enough times to know the difference now.
The honest truth is that distractions usually come dressed up as opportunities. They have the right logos, the right people in the room, the right energy. But I've learned to pay attention to what happens after the initial excitement fades, because it typically fades. A real opportunity gets more interesting the longer you sit with it.
The question I come back to now is simple: does this serve my team, our business today, or the future business I'm building? Earlier in my career it was more personal: does this serve the role I'm in or the role I'm trying to build toward? But in both cases the filter is the same. If I can't draw a clear line between this opportunity and where I'm genuinely trying to go, that's usually my answer.
AvA: You made an early bet on brands as real partners in entertainment. Looking ahead, where do you think the next unlock is, and how will brands, talent, and platforms work together differently over the next few years?
For a long time, the relationship between brands and entertainment was more transactional than creative. Content got made, and then the conversation about how brands fit in happened afterwards often too late for them to really shape anything meaningful. It wasn't anyone's fault; it was just how the system was structured.
What's happening now is a fundamental shift. Content needs brands. Creators genuinely want brands at the table, they understand the value, and they're not treating it as a compromise anymore. The walls that used to exist between the creative world and the brand world are coming down in a real way.
What gets me excited and what we're doing at CAA is putting brands and storytellers in the same room from the very beginning. Not retrofitting a sponsor into something that's already been built. Building it together from day one. When that happens, the work is better, the partnerships are deeper, and everyone wins. I have a best-in-class team, and I am so proud of the incredible work we are doing. We are so uniquely positioned and one of the first to offer this type of capabilities in traditional Hollywood.
The next unlock requires all three sides to move together:
Brands stepping fully into their creative seat at the table, not just showing up with a marketing budget.
Storytellers, on screen and off, embracing this new landscape. The best know that the right brand partnership doesn’t dilute their vision; it amplifies it.
Platforms building the business models and incentives that make early collaboration not just possible, but scalable and sustainable.
When all three align, and I genuinely believe they will, the work that comes out of it is going to redefine what entertainment looks like.
AvA: If you could sit yourself down at a moment in your career when you felt stuck or unsure, what’s the one piece of advice you’d share?
It’s so hard to choose one piece of advice, so here are a few
I'd go back and swap out a phrase I used to say constantly “fake it till you make it” for something my executive coach gave me recently “fuel it till you become it.” That shift sounds small, but it changed something real for me. The first one is about performing. The second one is about actually becoming. Words shape belief far more powerfully than we often realize.
I'd also tell myself to just go for it! There were so many rooms I almost didn't walk into because I didn't check every box on paper. I think a lot of people, especially women, wait until they feel completely ready. The truth is, in this business and probably so many other businesses, nobody checks every box. The people in the room aren't as certain as they look. Go anyway.
My last part of advice is to slow down. I used to fill every second because being busy felt productive, but some of my best decisions came when I stopped and gave myself space to think. Clarity doesn't show up when you're sprinting. It never did for me.
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