Carla Wallace

Carla Wallace is celebrated throughout the music industry for instincts that go far beyond simply finding and developing hit songs. She is known for her extraordinary ability to recognize talent in its earliest, most unformed stages — and to see potential in people and sounds that don’t fit any existing mold. That gift led her to discover Meghan Trainor at a song camp in Colorado when Trainor was just 17, and to champion Maren Morris long before Nashville knew what to do with her. Wallace co-founded Big Yellow Dog Music with music business entrepreneur Kerry O’Neil in Nashville in 1998. They built it into one of the most respected independent publishing and artist development companies in the industry before selling it to Sony Music Publishing in 2025. Its roster earned 10 GRAMMYs and 41 number one songs across genres. While helming Big Yellow Dog, Wallace developed decades-long relationships with such songwriting talents as Meghan Trainor (“All About that Bass”), Maren Morris, Josh Kear (“Need you Now”) and Daniel Tashian (“Golden Hour”) among many others. She has been named to Billboard’s Country Power Players and Indie Power Players lists, and recognized among MusicRow’s Rising Women on the Row and Billboard’s Top 40 Women in Music. Wallace also built Big Yellow Dog’s sync licensing division into one of its most lucrative revenue streams — an effort that grew, in part, out of the company’s early work with cult favorite artist Mindy Smith and the amazing contributions of BYD Sync executives Alex Stefano, Kourtney Kilpatrick, Nicole Rhodes and others. The division not only generated consistent income for the larger artist catalogs but set Big Yellow Dog apart from other Nashville publishers, and opened the door to signing left-of-center artists who might not have found a home elsewhere.