Issue 8 2024

Artist-owned cooperative realigns to offer evolved visual media partnerships to brands through stock visuals, custom curations and progressive representation. Stocksy – the artist-owned visual media cooperative specializing in culturally relevant and progressive imagery – today announced the hiring of Trace Cohen as their new CEO. Cohen joins with a 30-year tenured career in creative media and marketing for world-leading brands and agencies and brings a fresh service model, community design approach and technology strategy to the world of creative stock visuals. With a strong history of driving business growth for organizations through a brand-first lens, Cohen delivers proven success in community-building, artist support, and values-driven leadership to Stocksy’s cooperative business model. Stocksy’s highly curated stock visuals collection of over 2 million images and video, direct access to collaborative content sourced from 1,800 member-artists globally, and over 20 years combined staff curatorial experience provides the foundation for her transformed visual media partnership approach. “Creatives have never been so pressed as they are today to get the best and most culturally relevant visuals into their work”, says Bruce Livingstone, Co-founder and Chair of the Board for Stocksy. “Trace brings an eye for creative brand building and the heart to lead our co-operative.” New focus on Visual Media Partnerships In a media landscape and technological era where authenticity is essential, digitally overwhelmed teams face established and emerging challenges. Marketers and creatives pursue ways to effectively scale their brand imagery with representative visual media - with limited time, budgets, and creative resources. Stocksy’s new service model for visual media partnerships enables brands and agencies to work directly with Stocksy’s professional curators and member artists to source visuals that resonate in a world where conscious visual storytelling is paramount. Images and video are curated from Stocksy’s existing collection and/or sourced directly from our diverse class of 1,800 member artists worldwide. “Stocksy’s curated collection isn’t just about visuals; it’s about storytelling. It’s about sparking new ideas and representing the diverse perspectives of our global community,” says Trace Cohen. “Supporting and collaborating with modern brands to create the authentic, insightful, and relevant content needed in today’s market is our focus and design for tomorrow. Together, we’re redefining what it means to create visual media in a world of conscious consumerism.” Stocksy welcomes new CEO Trace Cohen to lead visual media transformation Auria, a leading supplier of highly engineered systems for automotive acoustics, textiles and cargo management for gas and electric vehicles, today announced the appointment of QiuMing Yang [CHOO-ming Yahng] as the new president and CEO, effective July 22, 2024. Yang succeeds Brian Pour, who is stepping down after leading the business for the past seven years since its inception. Yang has served as Auria’s executive vice president and managing director for Asia/ RSA operations since the company’s formation in 2017, in which time he has expanded the company’s customer base, while adding five new manufacturing facilities in the region. Yang will be based in the company’s operational headquarters in Southfield. “We are fully confident that Qiuming Yang’s thorough understanding of the business and his impressive career achievements make him ideally suited to seamlessly transition to the president and CEO role. We congratulate Yang on this well-deserved appointment!” said Board Chairman, Zhijun Lu. Yang said, “I am honored for the opportunity to lead this great company and our talented employees. It has been a privilege to work alongside Brian, and I am excited to continue building upon the foundation and momentum established under his leadership. As we continue driving towards our ambitious financial targets and sustainability standards, I know that the future is bright for Auria!” Pour said, “Auria has been an important part of my life over the last 7 years. I am filled with pride for what we, as a team, have achieved together. Together, we have transformed Auria from a startup joint venture to a global leader in automotive soft trim and acoustic systems. I’ve worked closely with Yang for 20 years at Auria and its legacy companies and have complete trust and confidence that Auria will continue to build on its success and thrive under his leadership.” Lu said, “On behalf of the entire Board of Directors, we would like to thank Brian for his exceptional leadership and the invaluable impact he made on Auria. He was instrumental in building Auria into the company that it is today and setting the organization on a path for continued success. We wish him much success in his future endeavors.”

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