Most creator managers promise to “handle the business” so talent can focus on content. Isabella Chen built BECCA MGMT on a harder premise: if creators’ contracts, Intellectual Property (IP), and likeness aren’t protected with the same rigor as other celebrities, there is no business to protect.
BECCA MGMT is a New York-based, full-service talent management company that blends traditional entertainment law standards with a creator-first strategy. Launched in 2023, the boutique agency focuses on a specific gap in the creator economy: most influencers have one person handling the roles of agent, manager, and lawyer, yet “99.9% of managers in this space are not attorneys.”
“We are really big on advocacy,” Isabella says. “These are people’s careers, their livelihoods that are in our hands. Our mission and driving force is to elevate creators and bring a bit more equality into the space.”
BECCA MGMT specializes in long-term career strategy, contract negotiation, and legal protection for influencers who make the majority of their income through brand partnerships. In an industry Isabella describes as still “very unregulated, especially when it comes to representation,” she is trying to reset the standard for what creators should expect from both management companies and brand partners.
From Big Law to a Creator-First Legal Philosophy
Isabella’s path into the creator economy is rooted in a traditional legal career. After studying international relations and public policy at Princeton and earning her law degree from NYU, she worked in corporate, IP, and entertainment law; first in big law, then on the talent side representing actors and entertainers. Those deals gave her a front-row view of how high-profile A-list clients negotiate endorsements in the six- and seven-figures: detailed contracts, strict IP protection, and a level of rigor rarely seen in influencer partnerships.
At the same time, Isabella began creating content herself “as a creative outlet,” attracting inbound offers from brands. The contrast was immediate. Having seen the industry from all three sides as a lawyer, a creator, and a talent manager, Isabella had a 360° view of how unprotected creators actually were. “I very quickly noticed that this space is very unregulated, especially when it comes to representation,” she says. Compared to Hollywood contracts, influencer agreements were “creator-unfriendly,” often granting brands expansive rights with minimal guardrails.
That experience shaped the philosophy behind BECCA MGMT. To Isabella, creators need legal protection long before they need a manager. “If you’re a creator and you’re starting to build your own business, the first person you should look for is a lawyer,” she says. “A lawyer is there to protect your interests.”
The reason is structural: most creators earn the majority of their income through brand partnerships, and every partnership hinges on a contract. Isabella points to three clauses she sees repeatedly harm creators: usage, exclusivity, and indemnification.
The Clauses That Quietly Cost Creators
On usage, Isabella frequently sees a disconnect between what is agreed up front and what ends up on the page.
“Brands love to sneak things in there that are not agreed to,” she explains. A campaign might specify a limited digital ad license for a set period, but the contract is drafted as a work-for-hire, which effectively gives the brand full ownership of the content.
“At the end of the day, the brand owns the content that the creator creates,” she says. “If you own the content, what’s the point of the license? You can then do whatever you want with that piece of content forever. And especially with the rise of AI, it can be quite scary.” With the rise of AI and likeness-replication tools, unrestricted use is no longer a minor risk – a single clause can expose creators to significant long-term exploitation.
Exclusivity is another area where fine print can reshape a creator’s income for months.
“I’ve seen brands time and time again sneak that into the contract that dilutes the creator’s leverage long term,” Isabella says. She recalls a creator who signed a year-long exclusivity clause without realizing it, after a manager (not a lawyer) signed on her behalf. “That’s an entire year of lost revenue. She was a full-time influencer, but then had to go back to the corporate world because that’s a loss of income.”
Then there is indemnification, a clause Isabella says is “constantly overlooked” but critical as creators scale.
“The way that it’s typically written is one-sided,” she explains. Many standard influencer agreements require the creator to fully indemnify and defend the brand for any third-party claims arising from the content, even when the alleged issue stems from the brand’s own product, claims, or brief. BECCA MGMT insists on mutual indemnification.
“If someone buys that product and has a horrible reaction, we always will include language to say, ‘Well, that’s because of the brand’s product,’” Isabella says. “So, the brand then has to step in and defend [and] hold the creator harmless.”
On a deal-by-deal basis, Isabella acknowledges the worst-case scenario is unlikely. But over time, she believes the risk is compounded.
“As a creator, the longer you’re in the space, the more you’re doing these partnerships, the more contracts you’re agreeing to, that risk gets higher and higher,” she says. “I strongly believe that unless you’re an attorney or you were trained by an attorney, you don’t know how to negotiate a contract.”
Building the Management Company She Wished Existed
BECCA MGMT is Isabella’s attempt to redesign the business model around the aforementioned realities.
“When I was a creator, I was very briefly managed and quickly realized it was terrible,” she says. The experience, however, taught her one important lesson: it makes a “huge difference” when an advocate other than the creator is negotiating with brands.
“BECCA” started as the name of a fake manager persona Isabella used to negotiate her own brand deals. That alter ego became the inspiration for BECCA MGMT, which she founded about two and a half years ago.
“One of the big things is realizing that creators don’t know what good management looks like,” she says. “They don’t know what that type of dynamic should be, that type of relationship should be, and what is acceptable versus what isn’t.”
Drawing on her corporate and entertainment background, Isabella built BECCA MGMT as a boutique, high-touch operation with an intentionally small roster.
“Given the background that I come from – very, very corporate, professional world – that’s definitely how I run BECCA MGMT and how we [work] with everyone, internally and externally,” she explains. Talent isn’t slotted into rigid billing quotas, and success isn’t measured solely by monthly revenue.
“We bring a lot of humanity and integrity to every single relationship that we have, and everything is sort of like a conversation,” Isabella says. “That’s something that could be really easily lost in this space as well, with everything being so digital.”
Inside BECCA MGMT’s In-Person, Relationship-Led Model
In a remote-first industry, BECCA MGMT is deliberately in-person.
“We’re fully in person as a team,” Isabella says. “It does make such a huge difference in being a collaborative team, bouncing ideas off of each other.”
Talent may have a dedicated manager, but day-to-day strategy is collective. “Behind the scenes, you really have all of us,” she notes. “We’re not so pigeonholed, being able to bounce ideas off [each other]” helps when creators shift niches or reposition their brands.
Based in New York City, the team spends significant time cultivating relationships with brands and agencies offline.
“This industry is so relationship-based at the end of the day,” Isabella says. Much of BECCA MGMT’s time is devoted to “building relationships, sustaining relationships with brands, with agencies,” whether over Zoom, coffee, or brunch. That groundwork, she says, is part of why brands now recognize her legal rigor without seeing it as adversarial.
“After that initial touch point of, ‘Yes, I am an attorney. I am negotiating every single contract. This is not meant to be – I’m not here to make your life harder,’” she explains. “But at the same time, I’m here to protect our creators.”
Educating a Vulnerable Generation of Creators
For Isabella, the creator economy’s age is both its strength and its vulnerability.
“It’s a new industry and a lot of it’s a young industry,” she says. Many creators are in their teens or twenties, navigating six-figure opportunities without prior experience. “They just don’t really have that life experience just yet. I would say they’re kind of like a vulnerable population.”
She believes the most “broken” aspect of the ecosystem is how quickly that vulnerability can be exploited.
“It’s the exploitation. It’s the fast cash grab, treating creators like cash cows and being in it for the short term and not so much the long term,” she says. “A lot of brands as well, are taking advantage of that fact.”
BECCA MGMT is beginning to expand its focus beyond its own roster. The “next chapter,” as Isabella describes it, is educating creators industry-wide about what is and isn’t acceptable, particularly when they’re approached by management companies.
“Hopefully, we are on that path to standardization,” she says, “If you’re a creator and a management company approaches you and you are confronted with this agreement, how do you negotiate that? What exactly are the risks? What does the contract actually say?”
She has already seen cases where previous management agreements locked creators into terms she finds “really exploitative and very unfair.”
“Even when it comes to representation and the management space, getting to a point where, like, no – these clauses and these management agreements should no longer exist and that should no longer be the standard,” she says.
Growth Plans and Long-Term Vision
BECCA MGMT is still young. For roughly the first year and a half, Isabella ran the agency solo; today, the team is small but growing, driven by demand from creators seeking representation.
“We’re facing a lot more demand when it comes to creators seeking representation, but we don’t have enough people on the team to support all of the creators,” she says. Keeping the roster intentionally small remains non-negotiable. “I truly believe that if you’re a talent manager, you need to have a relationship with each and every talent and know what’s going on with everybody. And that only works when you have a small roster.”
Most business so far has been word of mouth. The team recently redesigned its website and is beginning to think more actively about outreach, though education, not acquisition, remains the priority.
“I would say the focus is still on educating creators and helping them really know – if they are operating solo – what they should look out for, how to best advocate for themselves,” Isabella says.
Long term, she is less fixated on a specific exit or size than on seeing a different standard take root.
“I’m always looking for ways to better serve our creators,” she says. “I hope that maybe sooner rather than later, we have a super robust thing going and we have enough talent managers to support everyone.”
But success, in her view, ultimately looks like a smarter, more empowered creator class.
“It goes back to raising that standard of getting to a point where creators know that this is what it’s like working with management, this is what I deserve as a creator,” Isabella says.
Dragomir is a Serbian freelance blog writer and translator. He is passionate about covering insightful stories and exploring topics such as influencer marketing, the creator economy, technology, business, and cyber fraud.
Most creator managers promise to “handle the business” so talent can focus on content. Isabella Chen built BECCA MGMT on a harder premise: if creators’ contracts, Intellectual Property (IP), and likeness aren’t protected with the same rigor as other celebrities, there is no business to protect.
BECCA MGMT is a New York-based, full-service talent management company that blends traditional entertainment law standards with a creator-first strategy. Launched in 2023, the boutique agency focuses on a specific gap in the creator economy: most influencers have one person handling the roles of agent, manager, and lawyer, yet “99.9% of managers in this space are not attorneys.”
“We are really big on advocacy,” Isabella says. “These are people’s careers, their livelihoods that are in our hands. Our mission and driving force is to elevate creators and bring a bit more equality into the space.”
BECCA MGMT specializes in long-term career strategy, contract negotiation, and legal protection for influencers who make the majority of their income through brand partnerships. In an industry Isabella describes as still “very unregulated, especially when it comes to representation,” she is trying to reset the standard for what creators should expect from both management companies and brand partners.
From Big Law to a Creator-First Legal Philosophy
Isabella’s path into the creator economy is rooted in a traditional legal career. After studying international relations and public policy at Princeton and earning her law degree from NYU, she worked in corporate, IP, and entertainment law; first in big law, then on the talent side representing actors and entertainers. Those deals gave her a front-row view of how high-profile A-list clients negotiate endorsements in the six- and seven-figures: detailed contracts, strict IP protection, and a level of rigor rarely seen in influencer partnerships.
At the same time, Isabella began creating content herself “as a creative outlet,” attracting inbound offers from brands. The contrast was immediate. Having seen the industry from all three sides as a lawyer, a creator, and a talent manager, Isabella had a 360° view of how unprotected creators actually were. “I very quickly noticed that this space is very unregulated, especially when it comes to representation,” she says. Compared to Hollywood contracts, influencer agreements were “creator-unfriendly,” often granting brands expansive rights with minimal guardrails.
That experience shaped the philosophy behind BECCA MGMT. To Isabella, creators need legal protection long before they need a manager. “If you’re a creator and you’re starting to build your own business, the first person you should look for is a lawyer,” she says. “A lawyer is there to protect your interests.”
The reason is structural: most creators earn the majority of their income through brand partnerships, and every partnership hinges on a contract. Isabella points to three clauses she sees repeatedly harm creators: usage, exclusivity, and indemnification.
The Clauses That Quietly Cost Creators
On usage, Isabella frequently sees a disconnect between what is agreed up front and what ends up on the page.
“Brands love to sneak things in there that are not agreed to,” she explains. A campaign might specify a limited digital ad license for a set period, but the contract is drafted as a work-for-hire, which effectively gives the brand full ownership of the content.
“At the end of the day, the brand owns the content that the creator creates,” she says. “If you own the content, what’s the point of the license? You can then do whatever you want with that piece of content forever. And especially with the rise of AI, it can be quite scary.” With the rise of AI and likeness-replication tools, unrestricted use is no longer a minor risk – a single clause can expose creators to significant long-term exploitation.
Exclusivity is another area where fine print can reshape a creator’s income for months.
“I’ve seen brands time and time again sneak that into the contract that dilutes the creator’s leverage long term,” Isabella says. She recalls a creator who signed a year-long exclusivity clause without realizing it, after a manager (not a lawyer) signed on her behalf. “That’s an entire year of lost revenue. She was a full-time influencer, but then had to go back to the corporate world because that’s a loss of income.”
Then there is indemnification, a clause Isabella says is “constantly overlooked” but critical as creators scale.
“The way that it’s typically written is one-sided,” she explains. Many standard influencer agreements require the creator to fully indemnify and defend the brand for any third-party claims arising from the content, even when the alleged issue stems from the brand’s own product, claims, or brief. BECCA MGMT insists on mutual indemnification.
“If someone buys that product and has a horrible reaction, we always will include language to say, ‘Well, that’s because of the brand’s product,’” Isabella says. “So, the brand then has to step in and defend [and] hold the creator harmless.”
On a deal-by-deal basis, Isabella acknowledges the worst-case scenario is unlikely. But over time, she believes the risk is compounded.
“As a creator, the longer you’re in the space, the more you’re doing these partnerships, the more contracts you’re agreeing to, that risk gets higher and higher,” she says. “I strongly believe that unless you’re an attorney or you were trained by an attorney, you don’t know how to negotiate a contract.”
Building the Management Company She Wished Existed
BECCA MGMT is Isabella’s attempt to redesign the business model around the aforementioned realities.
“When I was a creator, I was very briefly managed and quickly realized it was terrible,” she says. The experience, however, taught her one important lesson: it makes a “huge difference” when an advocate other than the creator is negotiating with brands.
“BECCA” started as the name of a fake manager persona Isabella used to negotiate her own brand deals. That alter ego became the inspiration for BECCA MGMT, which she founded about two and a half years ago.
“One of the big things is realizing that creators don’t know what good management looks like,” she says. “They don’t know what that type of dynamic should be, that type of relationship should be, and what is acceptable versus what isn’t.”
Drawing on her corporate and entertainment background, Isabella built BECCA MGMT as a boutique, high-touch operation with an intentionally small roster.
“Given the background that I come from – very, very corporate, professional world – that’s definitely how I run BECCA MGMT and how we [work] with everyone, internally and externally,” she explains. Talent isn’t slotted into rigid billing quotas, and success isn’t measured solely by monthly revenue.
“We bring a lot of humanity and integrity to every single relationship that we have, and everything is sort of like a conversation,” Isabella says. “That’s something that could be really easily lost in this space as well, with everything being so digital.”
Inside BECCA MGMT’s In-Person, Relationship-Led Model
In a remote-first industry, BECCA MGMT is deliberately in-person.
“We’re fully in person as a team,” Isabella says. “It does make such a huge difference in being a collaborative team, bouncing ideas off of each other.”
Talent may have a dedicated manager, but day-to-day strategy is collective. “Behind the scenes, you really have all of us,” she notes. “We’re not so pigeonholed, being able to bounce ideas off [each other]” helps when creators shift niches or reposition their brands.
Based in New York City, the team spends significant time cultivating relationships with brands and agencies offline.
“This industry is so relationship-based at the end of the day,” Isabella says. Much of BECCA MGMT’s time is devoted to “building relationships, sustaining relationships with brands, with agencies,” whether over Zoom, coffee, or brunch. That groundwork, she says, is part of why brands now recognize her legal rigor without seeing it as adversarial.
“After that initial touch point of, ‘Yes, I am an attorney. I am negotiating every single contract. This is not meant to be – I’m not here to make your life harder,’” she explains. “But at the same time, I’m here to protect our creators.”
Educating a Vulnerable Generation of Creators
For Isabella, the creator economy’s age is both its strength and its vulnerability.
“It’s a new industry and a lot of it’s a young industry,” she says. Many creators are in their teens or twenties, navigating six-figure opportunities without prior experience. “They just don’t really have that life experience just yet. I would say they’re kind of like a vulnerable population.”
She believes the most “broken” aspect of the ecosystem is how quickly that vulnerability can be exploited.
“It’s the exploitation. It’s the fast cash grab, treating creators like cash cows and being in it for the short term and not so much the long term,” she says. “A lot of brands as well, are taking advantage of that fact.”
BECCA MGMT is beginning to expand its focus beyond its own roster. The “next chapter,” as Isabella describes it, is educating creators industry-wide about what is and isn’t acceptable, particularly when they’re approached by management companies.
“Hopefully, we are on that path to standardization,” she says, “If you’re a creator and a management company approaches you and you are confronted with this agreement, how do you negotiate that? What exactly are the risks? What does the contract actually say?”
She has already seen cases where previous management agreements locked creators into terms she finds “really exploitative and very unfair.”
“Even when it comes to representation and the management space, getting to a point where, like, no – these clauses and these management agreements should no longer exist and that should no longer be the standard,” she says.
Growth Plans and Long-Term Vision
BECCA MGMT is still young. For roughly the first year and a half, Isabella ran the agency solo; today, the team is small but growing, driven by demand from creators seeking representation.
“We’re facing a lot more demand when it comes to creators seeking representation, but we don’t have enough people on the team to support all of the creators,” she says. Keeping the roster intentionally small remains non-negotiable. “I truly believe that if you’re a talent manager, you need to have a relationship with each and every talent and know what’s going on with everybody. And that only works when you have a small roster.”
Most business so far has been word of mouth. The team recently redesigned its website and is beginning to think more actively about outreach, though education, not acquisition, remains the priority.
“I would say the focus is still on educating creators and helping them really know – if they are operating solo – what they should look out for, how to best advocate for themselves,” Isabella says.
Long term, she is less fixated on a specific exit or size than on seeing a different standard take root.
“I’m always looking for ways to better serve our creators,” she says. “I hope that maybe sooner rather than later, we have a super robust thing going and we have enough talent managers to support everyone.”
But success, in her view, ultimately looks like a smarter, more empowered creator class.
“It goes back to raising that standard of getting to a point where creators know that this is what it’s like working with management, this is what I deserve as a creator,” Isabella says.
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