HPA Names Kari Grubin Its First Woman President (EXCLUSIVE)

The Hollywood Professional Association has named industry vet Kari Grubin–who currently serves as member services director for the Motion Picture Association’s Trusted Partner Network–as its first woman president. She assumes the role on Jan. 1, succeeding outgoing president Seth Hallen.

HPA was founded in 2002 as the Hollywood Post Alliance and later renamed the Hollywood Professional Association in an effort to expand membership beyond it core base in postproduction. Grubin will be its third president, following Hallen and founding president Leon Silverman. Also in 2025, Renard Jenkins will assume the role of vice president of the board, and its executive committee will be rounded out by Craig German and Graylind Wherry.

Grubin has served on the HPA Board since 2020 and during this time she co-founded the HPA Women in Post committee. Additionally, under the leadership of Grubin and fellow board member Loren Nielsen, Women in Post created the Young Entertainment Professionals mentoring program, which has mentored nearly 200 “YEPS” since its inception. In 2021, she and fellow board member Jenkins led the launch of HPA All, an initiative to strengthen the media and entertainment community by supporting career pathways for underrepresented groups. 

Grubin tells Variety that as president she hope to “open the doors even wider.” She elaborated, “The industry is changing so rapidly, at a pace that we’ve never seen before, and HPA has always had a tradition of staying in step with all those changes. My ultimate goal is to help to provide that transition for the HPA into whatever our membership needs it to be for the future. And there’s a lot of things to look at regarding making it feel like a place where everybody belongs. Our definition of content is changing so dramatically that we want to make the space for different types of content creators and all of the supporting industry that helps people tell their stories.”

Said Hallen in a released statement, “Leading the HPA over the past nine years has been one of the most fulfilling experiences of my career. … Kari is an exceptional leader with the energy, expertise, and insight to guide HPA into its next era of growth and evolution.”

Early in her career, Grubin worked as an assistant editor, before joining Paramount where she worked in mastering for studio operations, eventually rising to head of technical operations. Moving to a new enterprise, Grubin was a co-founder and general manager of the mastering facility at Global Entertainment Partners before it was sold to Deluxe Entertainment Services Group. At Deluxe, she was named vice president of post and restoration before joining cybersecurity company NSS Labs as sales director, and then served as vice president of mastering for Walt Disney Studios. She is listed as a co-inventor for three U.S. patents in media and entertainment technology.

An active member of the industry, Grubin also serves as project director on SMPTE’s Rapid Industry Solutions on set virtual production initiative. She was asked to join the Production and Technology Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2021.