A leading advocate for research at the intersection of arts and health, as Artistic Advisor to the Kennedy Center, Renée Fleming helped launch the first ongoing collaboration between that institution and the NIH.

In November, Fleming starred in the world premiere staging of The Hours, a new opera based on the prize-winning novel and film, at the Metropolitan Opera. Fleming won the 2023 Grammy Award® for Best Classical Vocal Solo Album for Voice of Nature: The Anthropocene.

www.reneefleming.com

Magsamen is the co-author of Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us with Ivy Ross. She is also the designer of the Impact Thinking model, an evidence-based research approach to accelerate how we use the arts to solve problems in health, well-being, and learning. In addition to her role at IAM Lab, she also serves as co-director of the NeuroArts Blueprint project in partnership with the Aspen Institute.

Before co-founding FWI, Galinksy spent more than two decades at the Bank Street College of Education.

At FWI, Ellen Galinsky has led the most comprehensive ongoing nationally representative studies of the U.S. workforce and workplace. Over her career, her research has focused on work life, children’s development, youth voice, childcare, parent-professional relationships, and parental development. Galinsky is the author of Mind in the Making, a best-selling book on early learning that the New York Times called “an iconic parenting manual,” and Judy Woodruff of PBS NewsHour named “must reading for everyone who cares about America’s fate in the 21st Century.” Her book on adolescent development, The Breakthrough Years, will be published in early 2024 and involved nine-years of research, including three original studies. She is also the author of 90 books/reports and 360 articles for books, academic journals, magazines, and the Web.

Other career highlights include serving as the elected President of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC); being elected as a fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources (the highest honor in human resources), a Distinguished Achievement Award from Vassar College, and the 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Work and Family Researchers Network.

Tracie Jade Jenkins began her career as a theatre and television artist and producer. She served 20 years as an educator and later stepped into the role of Director of Arts at the Duke Ellington School of Arts in Washington, D.C. As a nonprofit leader with a specialty in fundraising and creative program development, Tracie recently founded the Equanimity Institute of Arts and Wellness, developed to support balance and self-regulation through the arts, nature, and social sciences. The Equanimity Institute of Arts and Wellness opens virtually in the fall of 2023.

Prior to her appointment as the lead for School and Community programs, McCune served as Director of D.C. School and Community Initiatives from 2001 to 2017, leading Kennedy Center’s relationships with Washington, D.C. public and charter schools, and local community collaborators. She was also the lead for the former Dance Theatre of Harlem Residency at Kennedy Center and Musicals in the Schools. McCune’s current program portfolio includes directing a comprehensive partnership with District of Columbia Public and charter schools, performance access programs, Any Given Child national collective impact initiative, and the Kennedy Center’s Youth Council, which McCune founded in 2016. 

As a charter member of the Kennedy Center’s Social Impact pod, McCune contributes to vision and planning for the REACH campus programming and curriculum. McCune is the chair of the Boris L. Henson Foundation board of directors, immediate past president and current treasurer of the Duke Ellington School of the Arts Project (DESAP) board of directors, and additionally serves on the board of directors of the DC Arts and Humanities Education Collaborative, CapX Lab School, and MINDPOP.   

Previously, Ms. McCune served as the Director of Community and Education Programs at the Choral Arts Society of Washington and the Marketing Manager at the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works. McCune earned a BA in Music/Minor in Business and an MBA from Drake University, Des Moines, IA.

Sweitzer received the title Loudoun County Humanitarian of the Year in 2014, and in that same year was invited as a guest to the White House for his work with disabilities. A Place to Be and Sweitzer were awarded “Best Music Therapy Provider of the Year” by the American Music Therapy Association in June 2017. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, he has facilitated a nation-wide online support group featured both on NPR and ABC News. Sweitzer is a subject of the documentary Music Got Me Here along with one of his heroes, Forrest Allen, a young man with Traumatic Brain Injury who found his voice and courage through music therapy. Music Got Me Here is on Apple TV and Amazon Prime. The Hollywood “narrative” film of Music Got Me Here is in development with producer Irwin Wrinkler of MGM, and stars Outer Banks star Chase Stokes as Forrest. Tom’s role will be announced in the summer of 2023.

Tom Sweitzer’s one-man show about his childhood will be Off-Broadway this fall at Signature Theater in New York. Tom is dedicated in growing A Place to Be and its mission to help people face, navigate, and overcome life’s challenges through music therapy. He enjoys inspiring, entertaining, and educating while presenting in front of audiences as an actor, thought leader, and music therapist.