Leadership

Maryanne Braine

Originally from Columbus, Ohio, Maryanne Braine is an artist and photographer who is committed to addressing inequities in our society through arts education and national service.  She served two AmeriCorps service terms with City Year New York and Reading Partners New York. During her service with City Year, Maryanne designed and implemented an after-school arts curriculum at a public elementary school in East Harlem. While serving with Reading Partners, she ran a tutoring center for K-4th grade students out of a charter school in The Bronx. During her time serving with AmeriCorps she witnessed how the creative arts can positively impact communities and provide a platform for youth to tell their stories.

Prior to ArtistYear, she worked at NYC Service, a division of the Mayor’s Office of New York City. In her role as NYC Service Year Support Coordinator, she created and managed professional development programming and networking opportunities to strengthen the current AmeriCorps member and alumni community throughout NYC. This work allowed her to advocate for the AmeriCorps population while helping members leverage their own service experiences to meet career goals.

Maryanne continues to pursue art making, specializing in alternative and analog photography processes such as cyanotypes, mordancage, emulsion lifts, and gel transfers. Her work has been featured in collective exhibitions nationally and internationally, including China, India, and New Zealand. She was an artist-in-residence at The Spruce Residency in Indiana, PA in 2019.

Maryanne received her BA in Studio Art from Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana in 2014 and her MFA in Photography & Related Media at Parsons School of Design, The New School in New York City in 2018.

She currently resides in Brooklyn, NY.

Betsaleel (Bets) Charmelus

Betsaleel (Bets) Charmelus is a facilitator, community advocate, and an auditory story-teller. His work is based on helping others find the answers to the questions they pose within themselves by honoring multiple ways of thinking, acknowledging multiple ways of knowing, and empowering multiple ways of learning. Bets provides mentorship, professional development, and day-to-day supervision for the ArtistYear Philadelphia Fellows and is a member of our leadership team.

Bets serves as program director for the anti-violence, music based non-profit Beyond the Bars. He also facilitates music instruction for survivors of sexual trauma with Joseph J. Peters Institute’s B.O.S.S. Program (Boys Overcoming Stigma and Shame), coordinates men’s mental health support groups, and is an aural story-teller in the nationally acclaimed, all-black rock band ill Fated Natives. In all facets, Bets is passionate about finding and claiming new spaces, building strong, inter-connected communities, and exploring the difference between questioning oneself and asking oneself questions.

Bets is a graduate of Temple University where he received a bachelor’s degree in Information Science and Technology. Bets resides in West Philadelphia.

Kate Curtin

Kate Curtin is ArtistYear’s North Carolina Regional Lead, serving as a liaison to Moore County Schools and Lee County Schools, and providing mentorship, professional development, and day-to-day supervision for the ArtistYear NC Fellows.  She grew up surrounded by the arts and is deeply committed to bringing all youth the same opportunity.

Kate received her Bachelor of Arts with a double major in History and French from Hofstra University.  Kate is a U.S. Army Veteran and the Youth Program Director for the Arts Council of Moore County. In her role with the Arts Council, Kate is responsible for bringing educational performing artists into the rural county’s 23 schools, reaching over 15,000 students each year. She created the RePaint Art Supply Drive which distributes donated art supplies to Moore County’s public schools and is the organizer of the annual Young People’s Fine Arts Festival showcasing K-12 youth art from across Moore County. 

Over the past 12 years, Kate has volunteered extensively within the Moore County Public School system, primarily in Title 1 schools.  She served as the Southern Pines Primary’s PTA Vice-President, Southern Pines Elementary’s PTA Treasurer, and Southern Middle School’s Parent Advisory Committee liaison, School Improvement Team member, PTA Treasurer and President. She was the co-founder and chair of the Military Family Council and the Pineland “Thundering Herd,” a travel basketball team for at-risk male teens.  Kate currently serves on the Moore County Historical Association’s Board of Trustees and is a swim team coach for the Southern Pines Elks.  

Margo Drakos

Committed to a life of service that harnesses the innovative power of technology and the transformative potential of the arts, Margo Drakos is a former concert cellist turned entrepreneur, and a proud U.S. active duty Military spouse. She is a founder and CEO of ArtistYear.

Margo has spent the past decade working with private and public sector institutions leveraging technology and strategic alignment to realize scale, revenue generation, and sustainability. She has recruited, led, and motivated matrix and dispersed organizations of engineering, product, marketing, and growth teams in the non-profit and commercial spaces while maintaining high-quality standards.  Until 2017, Margo spent four years as Chief Technology Officer and at McChrystal Group LLC, a software and service company designed to optimize organizational performance.

Margo began working as a professional musician at age four, performing on national radio and television commercials.  Over the course of her career as a cellist she performed as a soloist, chamber, and orchestral musician on the world’s preeminent stages on five continents. Margo entered music conservatory at fifteen as a double major in cello and composition and graduated from Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia in 1999. She served as Artist-in-Residence and Cello and Chamber Music faculty member at the Aspen Music Festival and Manhattan School of Music from 2002-2008. Margo’s positions included cellist of the American String Quartet, Principal Cellist of the Oregon, San Diego, and Seattle Symphonies, and Associate Principal of Pittsburgh Symphony.  She toured regularly with “Musicians from Marlboro” and has recorded and produced for Sony Classical, Naxos, Arabesque, and Longhorn Records.

In 2007, embracing the power of technology to democratize access to the arts, Margo co-founded and led her first start-up, InstantEncore.com, the world’s leading provider of web and mobile technology to the performing arts. In that role, Margo executed strategic partnerships to enable some of the first live web and mobile concert streaming and download events from Carnegie Hall to the Sydney Opera House.  In 2011, she was made a Partner at the SwitchCase Group, the lead investor in InstantEncore.

In 2010, Margo was honored as a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, a community of extraordinary global leaders under forty. Margo has been invited to speak on technology, entrepreneurship, and the arts at institutions and events including Americans for the Arts, Carnegie Mellon University, the Global Competitiveness Forum of Saudi Arabia, TechVenture in Singapore and the World Economic Forum at Davos.

Margo received a Masters in Human Rights from Columbia University and holds Executive Degrees in Global Leadership and Public Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School and Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. Her publications have appeared in the Aspen Institute Magazine, The International Affairs Review, The Stanford Social Innovation Review, and The Cornell International Law Journal.

Julia Durkin

Philadelphia-suburb native Julia Durkin grew up surrounded by the arts as a musician and visual artist where she gained a deep appreciation for the impact of arts education. She brings this perspective and passion to her role as Chief Finance Officer and Director of Human Resources at ArtistYear. Julia leads finance, compliance, and human resource planning and implementation in addition to supporting ArtistYear’s operations, strategy, and realization.

Prior to ArtistYear Julia served as Operations Director for Play On Philly, where she created the Human Resources department, guided the organization through six years of successful financial audits, and managed the budget growth from $1.2 million in 2013 to $2.4 million in 2018.

She has also served as Operations Director and Director of Compliance for Senator Bob Casey’s successful 2012 reelection campaign.

Julia received a Bachelor of the Arts with a double major in Performance Studies and Political Science at Northwestern University. She also holds a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from the Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania, and a certification in Human Resources from the Society for Human Resources.

As a lifelong musician, she studied bassoon with Shirley Curtiss, performed in chamber ensembles at Philadelphia’s Settlement Music School, performed in the Pennsylvania Music Educators Association All-State Orchestra under the direction of Rossen Milanov, and participated in numerous musical theatre productions over the years.

She currently resides within the suburbs of Philadelphia with her husband, their son, Quinn, and miniature goldendoodle, Lucy.  She also enjoys painting and using chalk pastels in her spare time.

Rebecca Imani C. Graham

Rebecca Graham is a musician and educator of both vocal and instrumental music. They work with each ArtistYear AmeriCorps Fellow class to achieve their highest potential as teaching artists, classroom educators, and dedicated citizen-artists.

A graduate of Ithaca College’s James J. Whalen School of Music, Rebecca earned her Bachelor’s degree in Music Education with a concentration in trumpet in 2010. Upon graduating, they spent a year in service as the Family Communications Americorps VISTA at New Roots Charter School, a start-up high school in Ithaca, NY where they were later brought on as the full-time Music Director. Over the course of two years at New Roots, Rebecca taught and developed sustainability and social justice arts curriculum for grades 9-12 with classes including chorus, jazz ensemble, chamber ensemble, a student-led rock band, music theory and appreciation.

Since moving to Philadelphia in 2013, Rebecca has worked as a vocal Teaching Artist with Musicopia’s FAME (Fostering Artistry and Musical Excellence) and residency programs. Rebecca’s Complaint Choir program has been hailed as “innovative” and “highly popular” and is often requested by school communities looking to better engage their “at-risk” and neurodivergent students. Rebecca served on the Musicopia Board of Directors from 2015-2017 as the Teaching Artist liaison. They also worked with Philadelphia Youth Orchestra’s Tune Up Philly program as a brass faculty member and Site Supervisor, working closely with the Director to ensure continued program-wide success amongst faculty and students.

Rebecca joined ArtistYear in January 2018 as the City Lead of Philadelphia.

You can catch Rebecca performing under the moniker Honeychile, and with the Philly-based hip hop collective Hardwork Movement.

Utsa Hazarika

Utsa Hazarika is an artist and writer based in Queens, New York. Her research-based practice ranges across video, installation and photography, and explores how an interdisciplinary dialogue can push us to think about power, memory and resistance. Her work has been exhibited in India and the United States, and she has been awarded residencies and fellowships internationally, including by the Queens Museum, Asian Cultural Council, and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in the United States; Lijiang Studio in China; and Khoj International Artists’ Association in India.

Through her work on Artreach India’s innovative arts programs, Utsa managed art education projects focused on women and children in low-income communities and shelters for the homeless in Delhi. She has since worked on educational initiatives in the arts at The New School Art Collection, and the CASA Teaching Residency at the Queens Museum, which engages K-12 students in the NYC Borough of Queens public schools.

Through both independent projects, and work with local and international organizations, Utsa has over a decade of engagement with community-based research, advocacy and education. Her work has focused on indigenous communities and marginalized urban communities in South and South East Asia, and immigrant communities in Britain and the United States. Her art and academic research has been published internationally including in Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology (UK), Trans Asia Photography Review (US) and The Caravan (India). She holds an MFA in Fine Arts from The New School and an MPhil in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge.

Nick Lenio

Nick Lenio is ArtistYear’s Colorado Regional Lead, serving as the mentor and manager of AmeriCorps Fellows serving in the Roaring Fork School District and Greater Denver area.

Nick has been teaching music in Pennsylvania and Colorado public schools since 2009. He has witnessed first-hand the transformative power that music can have on young people of every background and firmly believes that every young person should be exposed to arts education.

Nick started his education career at the age of 22, serving as the Director of Bands at Lebanon High School in Lebanon, PA. During that time, participation in band classes doubled at the school. In 2012, Nick moved across the country to live in the Rocky Mountains and accepted a position as Director of Bands for 5th-12th grade at Basalt Middle and High Schools in Basalt, CO. He taught full-time in this position for 7 years and grew the band program from about 150 students to over 320 students. He transformed the high school band into the “Basalt StreetHorns”, a New Orleans-style street band that performed at many community events and opened for musical artists such as Train, Andy Grammer, Michael Franti, and Lionel Richie. He also took that group to New Orleans for a week in 2018 to have an immersive experience of listening, learning, and performing on the streets and in the city’s clubs. In 2016, Nick was a semi-finalist for the GRAMMY Music Educator Award.

In 2013, Nick began teaching an after-school guitar class through Lead Guitar and in 2019, he became Lead Guitar’s Regional Director for Colorado, teaching and supervising programs in the Roaring Fork Valley and in Denver public schools.

Nick received his Bachelor of Science degree in Music Education from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 2009 and his Master of Music degree in Instrumental Conducting from Messiah University in 2013. He is an active musician in the Roaring Fork Valley who performs on solo acoustic guitar, classical guitar, and plays bass guitar in a funk/reggae band. When he’s not teaching or performing, Nick finds his peace while mountain trail running, rock climbing, and backcountry snowboarding with his wife and two yellow labs.

Maggie Phillips

Maggie Phillips is an artist who uses movement, digital media, and performance to explore science, connection, and experimentation.  Maggie will support our onboarding and program coordination, and serve as ArtistYear’s ACCESS (Artists Connecting Creatively to Enrich and Support Schools) Lead. ACCESS is a pilot program emerging from lessons learned during the pandemic. The intentions and outcomes of ACCESS are the same as our foundational model, but the new model varies in its even more intentional use of technology to deliver virtual and in-person learning. Maggie will support Fellows as they serve in Philadelphia schools and as content creators in partnership with YouTube Kids.

Maggie served for two years as an ArtistYear AmeriCorps Fellow — As a member of the Class of 2020 at F. Amedee Bregy School in Philadelphia, and as a member of the Class of 2021 as a Senior Fellow with ACCESS.

Maggie Phillips is originally from Eau Claire, WI and grew up immersed in dance, performance, and competitive figure skating.  Maggie graduated from Middlebury College as a double major in chemistry and dance.

Stu Warshawer

Stu Warshawer is joining ArtistYear as Chief Program Officer in Summer 2021.  In this role, Stu will focus on the developing, managing, and evaluating of ArtistYear programming as it scales nationally, ensuring the program yields our vision of positive outcomes for students, schools, and AmeriCorps Fellows.

Stu began his career in education in 2003 and brings extensive experience working in New York City, Philadelphia, and Camden Title I Schools. In 2019, he became a KIPP Fisher Fellow and founded a High School in Camden, NJ. Prior to launching a school with KIPP, Stu served as a Principal for 5 years with Mastery Charter Schools, leading the team at Harrity Upper School in West Philadelphia to breakthrough student achievement results. Stu hosted several ArtistYear Fellows during his tenure at Harrity. In 2019, Harrity was recognized by the School District of Philadelphia for advancing two categories on the city’s School Progress Report between 2014 – 2018.

Prior to serving as a principal, Stu served as a middle school teacher in New York City public schools, and as a Dean of Students for Achievement First Charter Schools in Brooklyn. In addition to being a career educator and school leader, Stu is a father, husband, an avid rock climber and competitive athlete who was featured with his students on season 10 of NBC’s “American Ninja Warrior.” He grew up in Media, PA and graduated from Williams College with a Bachelor of Arts in Religion.

Christine Witkowski

Christine Witkowski is a musician, educator and organizational strategist. As the Chief Impact Officer of ArtistYear, Christine leads ArtistYear’s evaluation and research efforts to assess program outcomes for underserved youth, schools/districts, and the ArtistYear AmeriCorps Fellows themselves, today and tomorrow.  Through her work as a consultant, Christine provides expertise in leadership, strategy, staffing, cultural competence, teacher training and evaluation for foundations, non-profits and cultural institutions. She is also the author and editor of “El Sistema: Music for Social Change” (Omnibus Press): a collection essays on the practical and philosophical application of impactful and community-driven music programs for youth development.

From 2010-2015, Christine designed, implemented, and led Youth Orchestra LA (YOLA) at Heart of Los Angeles (HOLA)- an intensive, free music and youth development program located in the city’s most diverse and underserved neighborhood. With a dedicated teaching faculty, grassroots parental support and multiple partner organizations, YOLA at HOLA became a model program, serving hundreds of K-12 students and hosting visitors from over 25 countries.

Christine received her bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University, a master’s degree from McGill University, and holds a certification in community counseling from the Southern California Counseling Center. She was an inaugural Sistema Fellow at New England Conservatory of Music, and a New Horizon Fellow at Aspen Music Festival and School.

ArtistYear Trustees

Douglas Bohr

Elizabeth Warshawer, Co-Founder, ArtistYear

Margo Drakos, Co-Founder, ArtistYear

Polly Kahn

Robert Carpenter, PhD.