Our Staff
Jan Nadav, MSS, LCSW, Founding Executive Director, has been a practicing therapist, clinical supervisor, and program director for over 25 years. In addition to being a practicing therapist, she has worked in community mental health settings, hospice care, and the nonprofit sector in arts and education.
Jan brings a wealth of knowledge and understanding in the areas of intergroup work, emotional intelligence, collective trauma and empathy development. She has a private practice at in Denver, CO where she provides counseling and life coaching for a wide range of personal challenges, including: life and work transitions, relationship/family issues, grieving loss, understanding emotions, and healing patterns caused by early adversity.
Jan is passionate about using the arts and music as a catalyst for community collaboration and perceptual change. She was the Director of Education at Colorado’s Mizel Museum for five years, where she developed successful initiatives utilizing teaching artists in content-based learning. She was awarded a Colorado Creative Industries Grant in 2011 and the National Endowment of the Arts award in 2013 for her innovative work in high-need school communities. Jan holds a Master’s degree in Social Work and Social Research from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania.
Brian Laidlaw, Master Teaching Artist/ Youth Mentor, is a poet-songwriter recently completed his Ph.D. in Creative Writing at the University of Denver. He has released books and albums with a variety of publishers and record labels, most recently THE STUNTMAN (Milkweed Editions, 2015) and THE MIRRORMAKER (Milkweed Editions, 2018), as well as the forthcoming SUMMER ERR (Mount Vision Press, 2019.) Brian has served as a songwriting consultant on multiple Grammy-winning and Grammy-nominated albums and continues to tour nationally as a folksinger. He also co-founded Unrestricted Interest, an organization that provides poetry and songwriting mentorship to children and adults on the Autism Spectrum, and frequently collaborates with the Department of Public Transformation to offer music and creative writing workshops in rural areas.
Micah Hendler, Master Teaching Artist/ Youth Mentor, (Forbes 30 Under 30 for Music) is a musical changemaker working to harness the power in each of our voices to make a difference.
Micah founded the Israeli-Palestinian Jerusalem Youth Chorus in 2012 as a synthesis of years of work in musical community-building and conflict transformation (including a Yale degree in music and international studies) and has founded, directed, sung with, or played with dozens of musical ensembles of varying global styles, including the Yale Whiffenpoofs. A CARA-nominated vocal arranger, he has studied Community Singing and Circle Singing with GRAMMY-winning composers Ysaye Barnwell and Roger Treece, and uses these two methodologies and others to open up the concept of what a chorus can do and who should be in it. Along with Austin Willacy, he is the co-founder of Raise Your Voice Labs, offering an immersive experience — in person or virtual — that combines facilitated group process with creative expression.
Austin Willacy, Master Teaching Artist/ Youth Mentor, is a veteran singer/songwriter and group facilitator with decades of global experience helping leaders make lasting change.
An award-winning musician with 4 CD’s and 2 EP’s to his name, he has produced 10 full-length albums and completed multiple world tours with vocal band The House Jacks. For the past 22 years, Austin has directed ‘Til Dawn, Youth in Arts’ award-winning teen a cappella group that empowers youth to find their voices in many different ways. Inspired by his youth work, the Apple Store in San Francisco brought him in to do an Apple Music Lab on Finding Your Creative Voice and Songwriting Basics on the iPad.
Austin is an organizer and facilitator for YES! YES! Jams help individual changemakers deepen their root system and grow in consciousness and self-care. He is one of the co-founders of the Black Diaspora Jam, and the Arts for Social Change Jams in the US, Turkey and India. Along with Micah Hendler, he is a co-founder of Raise Your Voice Labs.
Roger Ames, Founding Inspirer/Consultant, is a Pulitzer Prize-nominee and a resident artist at the New Dramatists Playwrights Collective in New York City. He is an author, artist mentor, and composer who has written operas and musicals for American opera companies, off-Broadway theater, London Fringe, and the Hartford Stage of Connecticut. Roger’s pioneering work in education has brought him to school districts throughout the United States, where he develops programs that engage students from grade school through graduate school to write their own musical theater and opera performances. He was the principal author of Music! Words! Opera! commissioned by Opera America; the curriculum helps teachers get out from behind their desks, and use principles of opera and music-theater to create interdisciplinary, experiential learning. He worked in Europe for many years as a composer, opera coach, and conductor and served as chairman of music theater at The University of Hartford’s The Hartt School. Most recently, he was composer-in-residence and director of vocal music at Great Neck North High School, New York.
