At weekend one of Coachella 2024, during her main stage sunset slot, Sabrina Carpenter gave her then-new single, “Espresso,” its live debut — and by the festival’s second weekend, “we knew things had shifted,” recalls her manager, Janelle Lopez Genzink.
“It was obviously really exciting,” the Volara Management founder continues, “but it was also slightly nerve-wracking, because we knew we were stepping into a meaningful cultural moment that was going to continue to grow.”
“Espresso” went on to become Billboard’s No. 1 global song of the summer for 2024 and introduced Carpenter’s Grammy-winning, chart-topping sixth album, Short n’ Sweet, released that August; two subsequent singles from the set, “Please Please Please” and “Taste,” hit Nos. 1 and 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, respectively. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Volara was growing, too. By mid-2024, Lopez Genzink signed pop singer MARINA — who says Lopez Genzink “is one of the few who puts human beings first and commerce second” — and hired a new day-to-day manager, Bianca Nour, to join Volara’s tight team, which then consisted of early hires Amy Davidson and Merce Jessor.
By the start of 2025, Volara added another act to its roster: HAIM. “They’re my favorite rock band out there,” says Lopez Genzink, who was introduced to the trio through its attorney.
“Working with Janelle has been the greatest partnership,” the band’s Alana Haim says. “From the very beginning, her focus was always on supporting our vision and bringing our dreams to life. No idea is too crazy or too big — she makes you feel like anything is possible, and with her, it truly is.”
In 2025, Volara’s entire roster was on-cycle. “You should have seen our shared Google calendar,” Lopez Genzink says with a laugh. “There were a lot of colors.” In early June, MARINA released her sixth album, Princess of Power, and she embarked on a world tour in September that included her first Australian dates in 15 years. In late June, HAIM released its fourth album, I Quit, and it headed out on a tour of arenas and amphitheaters in September and October; by November, I Quit had scored the band its first best rock album Grammy nomination, making HAIM the first all-woman act to receive a nod in the category. (June was a particularly “crazy month,” with Lopez Genzink flying from New York for MARINA’s album promotion, then to Barcelona for Primavera Sound with HAIM and Carpenter, then to Los Angeles for her daughter’s tap recital — then back to London later that day. “I don’t ever want to do that again,” she says with an exasperated laugh.)
As for Carpenter, she followed Short n’ Sweet with yet another Grammy-nominated, chart-topping album, Man’s Best Friend, released in August. She added its songs — including Hot 100 No. 1 hit “Manchild” — to her hugely successful arena tour that wrapped in November and grossed $126.6 million over 72 shows, according to Billboard Boxscore (the trek ran from Sept. 23, 2024, to Nov. 23, 2025). Along the way, Carpenter became a bona fide festival headliner, topping the bills of Lollapalooza Chicago, Austin City Limits and Primavera. And come April, she’ll return to the desert to headline Coachella 2026. (At Coachella 2024, her weekend two outro predicted her quick return to the fest: “Coachella, see you back here when I headline.”)
Yasara Gunawardena
For Lopez Genzink, her rosterwide success is proof of concept — and why she sees results no matter how long she has had to build with an artist (a decade with Carpenter, dating back to her time at Faculty Management, compared with just one year with MARINA and six months with HAIM before each released their 2025 albums). “I work best with artists who have a really clear vision and a really, really strong work ethic,” she says. “I don’t think that anybody in music from the artist side or the executive side succeeds at a really high level unless you’re able to have the stamina to carry you when things are maybe not quite working yet. And then when things are working… when the largest opportunities are presented to you at one time, to have the energy to keep going.”
And yet, she says it’s equally important to know how — and when — to recover. She likens her team, and what she looks for in new hires, to athletes: “Someone who will work and work and work, but at the same time know how to take care of themselves so that we can always be like the best versions of ourselves for the artists, too.”
That mindset drove Lopez Genzink to found Volara in the first place. By 2021, she had 17 years of experience in artist management, including early roles with The Firm, Azoff Music Management and Faculty Management. (While interning at a major label, she recalls asking her boss, “What’s the job where you could be close to the artist all the time?”) She says her first management job at The Firm affirmed her path: “I don’t feel like I spent too many years trying to figure out what I wanted to do,” she says. “Obviously, the job of an artist manager isn’t super straightforward, but I had such a passion for it.”
Her main client across both Azoff and Faculty was a childhood favorite: New Kids on the Block. She spent over 15 years working as the band’s day-to-day manager, an opportunity that allowed her to travel the world on the group’s tours and even take part in the full arc of an album cycle, from A&R to rollout campaigns. “It really gave me the chance to grow as a manager,” she says, “and speaks to what I’m able to do now.”
Yasara Gunawardena
Soon after Faculty launched in 2015, Lopez Genzink met the firm’s next star client at a charity event. The then-15-year-old Sabrina Carpenter was acting on Disney’s Girl Meets World at the time and looking for artist management; Lopez Genzink was integral in signing her to Faculty. “From the moment that I met her, she had a very clear vision about how she was going to release her music and portray herself, even at that age.” (By 2018, Lopez Genzink rose to GM at Faculty.)
At the same time, Lopez Genzink’s own vision was crystalizing. “I was happy where I was, but I also had so much more in me,” she says. “When I started in management, I was a single female in [L.A.]. Then I got married and my life changed. And then I had one kid and my life changed again. And then I had two kids. I honestly wasn’t sure how I was going to be successful at the level that I wanted to be within the confines of a more traditional management company. I knew that I could build something that allowed me to succeed at a high level without giving up my desire to also have a partner, have kids and be present in their lives. And because management is such a lifestyle job, that’s just hard to do. So I wanted to build a company where that could be possible.”
Lopez Genzink launched Volara in August 2021, taking Carpenter with her seven months after the singer signed with Island Records, marking her departure from Hollywood Records. Carpenter’s Island debut, 2022’s Emails I Can’t Send, peaked at No. 23 on the Billboard 200 and included early breakout hit “Nonsense,” which became infamous for its cheeky outro that Carpenter tailors to each city she performs in.
“Nonsense” was an effective fire-starter — especially on the heels of key opening slots on Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour — but Carpenter’s one-two punch of 2024’s Short n’ Sweet and 2025’s Man’s Best Friend set her career ablaze. The two albums delivered five top five Hot 100 hits (“Manchild,” “Please Please Please,” “Taste,” “Tears” and “Espresso”) and made Carpenter one of seven artists since 1980 to receive consecutive album of the year Grammy nominations.
As Lopez Genzink puts it, any lasting artist partnership boils down to one key component: trust. “So that before things are crazy, you’ve built a cadence for how you do things that when things shift — and you want them to shift, for any client, whatever success looks like for them — that baseline is already there,” she says. “And that way when you do have days that feel overwhelming, the artist can fall back on you and trust that you have the clarity of mind to support them.”
This story appears in the Jan. 24, 2026, issue of Billboard.
