Building Hollywood's Village: HPA President Kari Grubin on Community, Innovation, and Change

By Daron James. Originally published, August 13, 2025 on motionpictures.org.

Since 2002, the Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) has been committed to supporting and advancing the media and entertainment industry. Renowned for events like the HPA Tech Retreat, where professionals discuss the intersection of creativity and cutting-edge workflows, and the HPA Awards, which celebrate groundbreaking artistry and innovation across the entertainment industry, the association plays a vital role in facilitating knowledge and fostering collaborative environments to move the industry forward.

It's through these engaging events that have sparked other HPA initiatives, including the Young Entertainment Professional (YEP) and Women In Post (WIP), both of which bring forward thoughtful insights and conversations, allowing working professionals to stay informed, build connections, and gain new skills that will shape the future of the industry. In January of this year, Kari Grubin stepped into the role of acting HPA President, with a goal to keep the organization at the industry's forefront, stating: HPA will continue to be a conduit for our community to grow, reach out for new opportunities and adapt.

We connected with Grubin, a long-standing board member, who in her time launched the WIP program in 2011 and co-created the YEP, which, according to the HPA has mentored 200 up-and-coming industry professionals, to ask how the HPA is adapting to industry trends, how their programs are evolving, and the impact of California's new film tax incentive.

How would you describe the HPA to anyone not familiar with the organization?

We are representatives of the media supply chain: the strategists, creatives, executives, and business owners who help content creators tell their stories. That can mean many things, including implementing the best process or workflow, identifying the right tools and people to execute it, or developing the necessary technologies. HPA is all about building community and connection through the events we produce. The HPA community is critical to the entire lifeline of making content, and it takes a village. Building that community and shining a light upon it, with a focus on knowledge exchange and recognition, has been our mission for the last 25 years.

As HPA president, have you set any goals to expand the organization that you felt were missing?

When the opportunity arose to become president, I thought about how I could continue that legacy of making the HPA accessible to more people, where they could have a space and a community to learn, grow, solve problems, and collaborate. It's important to me that HPA supports an industry that's experiencing a colossal transition. I want to continue helping our community and focus on our members in a way that creates a safe space for conversations to expand and grow.

The HPA offers several roundtable discussions and industry expert panels that anyone in the industry can attend. Can you talk about some of those initiatives?

HPA's NET (Networking Education Technology) roundtable events are extremely popular. They put subject matter experts, many of whom are directly involved in pressing industry issues, in conversation with attendees. Inquiry, information, and ideas flourish at NET events, all while people are connecting. The NET roundtable events are designed so that attendees move three times to different tables and talk with subject matter experts who are leading the tables on different topics. It's a really diverse and highly engaged set of conversations.

Women In Post (WIP) is a great initiative. How has the program evolved, and what can future attendees expect?

Women In Post has evolved, and HPA has nurtured it to become a profoundly vibrant part of the organization. I would say that at any WIP event, you can expect to hear from and meet women who are defining (or redefining) their organizations or companies. WIP events, such as lunches during the year, the HPA Tech Retreat Women In Post lunch, and other mixers, put interesting and accomplished women in the spotlight and are phenomenal networking events.

For those first stepping into the industry, the HPA created Young Entertainment Professionals (YEP). How has the program evolved?

Young Entertainment Professionals provides a place for people who are in the first 10 years of their career to participate in the organization, see its value, and build their own networks amongst each other. They are the future of the HPA, and over the last couple of years, it's grown. Since its launch, over 200 YEPS have gone through the program. Each year's class is about 35 YEPs matched with industry mentors. Initially, Young Entertainment Professionals was about people in a specific age range, but we updated the requirements to be about the first 10 years of their media supply chain career, opening a space for more people to participate.

The HPA Tech Retreat is one of the organization's headliner events - the most recent taking place in February 2025. What trends came out of the discussions?

AI remained a big topic at this year's Tech Retreat, and it will continue to be as it is leveraged and normalized throughout our pipelines. Progress happens regardless of whether we are in favor of something in particular or not. Our community is starting to embrace, learn, and understand the benefits and dangers. There are numerous questions on the legal front regarding provenance and other methods to protect intellectual properties.

Anything else?

Another big conversation at the Tech Retreat was focused on the new definition of media creation. What does it look like from what was formerly the traditional broadcast side, and leveraging through multiple distribution networks? And what are the tool sets around the content creators? There's a bit of a mis

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