Co-Founders
Gina Ragusa
One of the foremost rights and music clearances experts in the country, Gina has over 20 years experience working with advertising agencies and corporations, worldwide. Over the course of nearly two decades, she has cleared rights to music, film and TV clips, personalities, and numerous other forms of intellectual property. As such, she has worked on major, international campaigns for some of the world's top brands including GE, American Express, Mercedes, Microsoft, Hallmark, Mont Blanc, Absolute, Applebee's, Sprint, Trivial Pursuit, and Heineken, to name a few.
Prior to founding Six Degrees, Gina was Director of Rights & Music Clearances at Corbis, a stock photography company privately owned by Bill Gates. Hired to create and grow their clearance division, Gina built and managed a team of rights-clearance specialists around the world whose expertise crossed multiple mediums. She was also Sr. Project Manager at Sekani, formally known as Second Line Search, for many years where she learned the burgeoning intellectual property licensing business from the ground up. Proficient in all aspects of clearances, her specialties include client consulting, negotiating, budgeting, project management, proofreading contracts, and problem solving.
George Bartko
George has over two decades of experience in the media industry. Prior to founding Six Degrees, he served as COO and Partner of New York based Sekani, Inc. (Consolidated company of Second Line Search, Action Sports Adventure, Hot Shots and Film Bank) for nearly fifteen years before the company sold to Corbis, a stock photography company owned by Bill Gates. He was responsible for all areas of research, rights and clearances, sales, database management, library management, acquisition integration, training and business strategy. George leads the technology, operations and business growth of Six Degrees.
Team
Maria BurkeResearch SpecialistMaria handles research and intellectual property clearances. She worked in the fashion industry in the beginning of her professional career and in 2003 started her own business where she studied trends and researched fashion collections. Maria is also proud of her public service as a school board member for many years. As an avid researcher, Maria brings this ability to the Six Degrees Team with her relentless passion to find everything and anything our clients require.
Barry DagestinoResearch SpecialistBarry handles intellectual property rights and clearances as well as content research. He has over two decades of content licensing experience including his position prior to joining Six Degrees as the Director of Media Licensing for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios. He has a degree in film studies from the University of California at Santa Barbara and believes that the screenplay for the film Network is the best ever written.
Marybeth KavanaghResearch SpecialistMarybeth handles research and intellectual property clearances also. She has over 20 years experience in media/content research. There is not a challenge she will not gladly take whether it is locating that perfect image or video to compliment a project or tracking down the proper rights owner to obtain clearance or permission.
Pam BrosnanResearch SpecialistPam handles research and intellectual property clearances and has been in the Entertainment Industry for over 15 years. She has worked for the world-renowned Industrial Light + Magic in their commercial production division. Her acumen for research, a designer's eye, and a client-centric focus are a few of the qualities from her past work that she brings to Six Degrees. Pam is a self-described "NASA nut," following the space program with much interest and enthusiasm.
Karen AltersResearch SpecialistKaren handles intellectual property rights (third party, copyright, trademark, property) and music clearances. She is tenacious in her ability to negotiate terms and conditions with estates and agents representing composers, musicians, actors, and various other artistic professionals. She holds a Master of Arts in Cinema Studies and a Certificate in Intellectual Property Management from NYU. Karen is a rabid Mets fan, and also a proud member and singer in The New York Choral Society and an AIDS Walk NY walker.
James KingResearch SpecialistJames handles all technical details and the previewing and editing for our media research department. James has over 20 years experience in the stock footage industry and was a senior content editor for Sekani which was later acquired by Corbis.