SherryGordy

Raised inside the sound that changed America.

Sherry Gordy was born to Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown Records, and Jeana Jackson, a songwriter and an executive in marketing and promotions. She grew up in Southern California surrounded by music, movement and the constant hum of people making something out of nothing. The house was full of artists — Diana Ross, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson — and the lessons came with them.

Her mother is the half of that inheritance people tend to overlook. Jeana Jackson was a songwriter, and an executive in marketing and promotions. Promotions was where she made her name — she worked records to radio all over the country — taking new songs and albums to programmers and DJs and getting them played. She understood both how a record gets made and how it finds the people it was made for. Look at Sherry's own two careers, the stage and the boardroom, and it is not hard to see where each one came from.

What she took from that childhood was less about fame than conduct: poise, grace, humility, and how to carry yourself in a room. Her father taught independence early, and it stuck. Integrity and compassion were not aspirations in that house. They were the standard.

She went out and earned it herself.

While still in high school she took a job at an annuity company — her first taste of business on her own terms. She went on to study business administration while apprenticing at Motown, learning the operation from the inside rather than the marquee.

Drawn equally to performance, she trained in acting at the Estelle Harmon Academy in Hollywood, an education that would later shape everything about how she built and hosted a show.

Broker. Banker. Owner.

Sherry earned her real estate brokerage license and built a career in mortgage banking. She came from California to Las Vegas as a branch manager, and went on to set up branches around the country.

Another company hired her as a vice president. Later she wrote mortgages through her own online company.

She still holds her broker’s license today, at Rodeo Realty in Beverly Hills.

Then she built stages of her own.

Las Vegas is where the two halves of her life met. Sherry created, produced and hosted live productions that put singers, dancers, musicians, poets and comedians in front of real audiences — and gave a lot of performers their first serious room.