Chief Executive Officer, Chamber Music America. A career built from the ground up: founder, fundraiser, artist-educator, now leading one of the field's most consequential national organizations.
I set out to play the piano and make a life in music, touring and performing with my trio, building a private studio so strong that joining a college faculty never tempted me away from it, mentoring young chamber musicians.
Chamber Music | OC grew out of that same period, not after it. In 2012, while I was still touring and teaching, I co-founded the organization because Orange County, California didn't have one dedicated to the art form, built around performance, education, and community engagement together. The playing shaped what we started, and what we started gave the playing somewhere to grow. It grew, slowly and then not so slowly, and at a certain point I ran into the limits of what instinct alone could do. I didn't have the strategic skill set to take something small and make it sustainable at scale. That gap is what sent me to business school.
In 2018, fresh out of my Executive MBA, I took my first senior arts administration role, Director of Innovation and Program Development at the Music Academy of the West, building new programming and the stakeholder relationships to support it, preparing the institution to scale into a year round curriculum. I was still playing concerts, still teaching at Chamber Music | OC's Pre-College Program, but I was learning what it meant to build the infrastructure underneath the art rather than just perform on top of it.
When the pandemic hit, I moved back to Orange County to be closer to family and to take on a new role, Director of Business Development and Strategic Partnerships at the Philharmonic Society of Orange County. I spent that year leading business development across corporations and foundations and writing grants at the regional and federal level, at a moment when almost nothing about the arts felt secure. Then, in September of 2021, I returned to New York City to take the helm of Chamber Music America, the national service organization for the small ensemble field.
Looking back, the thread running through all of it is the same. An institution's job is to take a risk on an idea before it's proven, fund it, and stay in the room after the applause ends. I learned that first as a founder, then as an administrator, then in a fundraising seat during the hardest year our field had seen. I still play. But most days now, my instrument is an organization. I'm still trying to get the notes right.
As Co-Founder of Chamber Music | OC, I helped build an organization the LA Times credited with keeping classical music going through the pandemic. Proof that institutions built well can hold a field together when it matters most.
At the Music Academy of the West, I helped transform the institution into a year-round arts incubator. I now teach that same discipline, turning artistic vision into sustainable strategy, as faculty at Eastman's Institute for Music Leadership, and as a guest lecturer at Juilliard and Indiana University's Jacobs School.
At Chamber Music America, I've helped redefine the organization's role in advocacy, grantmaking, and professional development, including turning our National Conference financially positive for the first time in its history, achieved at our 2026 gathering in Chicago.
Advocacy, grantmaking, and field-building on a national scale.
Building the case for public investment in culture and arts education.
Connecting institutions, funders, and artists around shared opportunity.
Teaching the next generation of arts leaders at Eastman's Institute for Music Leadership.
Featured in The Economist ยท The New York Times ยท The Wall Street Journal ยท The Washington Post
600+ attendees, 100+ performing musicians, and the organization's first financially ahead conference in its history.
Chamber Music America acquired CelloBello, preserving Paul Katz's pedagogical legacy and expanding music education nationwide.
Represented Chamber Music America at NAfME's National Leadership Assembly in Washington, D.C.
