Harriet Campbell, Board of Directors

Harriet Campbell is a dance performer, choreographer and educator based in the Washington area. Ms. Campbell began her dance training as a teen at the Washington School of Ballet and continued at Indiana University in Bloomington where her teachers included Marina Svetlova, John Kriza and Nicholas Beriosoff. While at IU she also performed with the then-newly-formed Windfall Dancers, an independent modern dance group still prominent in the Bloomington dance scene today. Ms. Campbell’s professional career began in Germany where she danced at the Staatstheater Kiel and at the Nationaltheater Mannheim. While in Mannheim she danced group and solo roles in original works created for the company by its Artistic Director, Aachim Gerster. Currently Ms. Campbell teaches ballet, pointe, and Pilates to youth and adults at dance studios in the Washington DC area, including the Dance Institute of Washington.

Andrew Sowell, Board of Directors

Andrew Sowell is a practicing attorney in the Washington, DC area. He is originally from North Carolina and has been in DC for 11 years. He received his BA from the University of Arizona and worked several years in behavioral management before receiving his MA in International Peace and Conflict Resolution from American University. In an effort to continue serving people he received his JD from the University of the District of Columbia. Andrew is the managing member of Andrew M. Sowell, PLLC where he focuses on civil litigation. He is an experienced negotiator and mediator, and is actively involved in the community supporting cross-cultural communication and alternative dispute resolution.

Amy Melrose, Board of Directors

Amy Melrose is a creative thinker, poet, and the founder of Free in DC, where she blogs regularly about arts, culture and consciousness events in Washington, DC. Amy founded Free in DC to share her view of DC as a vibrant and creative city. Free in DC began running a weekly feature for ReadysetDC in early 2010, and more recently a weekend feature for Prince of Petworth. Amy works as a freelance New Media and Messaging Consultant for small businesses and organizations, and is the Washington, DC City Editor for Travel Onion, a new site aggregating resources for cities around the world. Amy can often be found blogging at local coffee shops and socializing at artsy events throughout DC.

Katherine Arens, Board of Directors

Katherine Arens is a development professional, and visual artist. A 2009 graduate (Summa Cum Laude) of the University of Mary Washington, she is currently pursuing her Masters of Arts in Arts Management at George Mason University. While at Mary Washington, Arens was twice recipient of undergraduate research grants. (One took her to Venice, in 2009, to study Titian’s altarpieces.) She has worked in development for the National Museum of Women in the Arts (Washington, D.C.) and in community outreach for Micron Technology (Manassas, Virginia.) A former resident of India, Panama, and Hawaii, she calls Virginia home. You can see her blog on arts management issues here.

Megan Smith, Board of Directors

Megan Smith is the Community Manager for Ovation, the only television network dedicated to the arts. With five years in the web industry, Megan is a specialist in digital marketing, project management and social media. She manages a large community of artists and art lovers on Ovationtv.com as well as the Ovation voice on major social networks. Having some training and experience in almost every genre, Megan has been a long time advocate for the arts. She received her BA from Columbia College, Chicago with a major in theater directing.

Ellyn R. Weiss, Board of Directors

Ellyn Weiss is a painter and printmaker, curator, blogger and teacher, with studios in Mt. Ranier, MD and Truro, MA. She is represented by Gallery 555 in Washington DC, the Wohlfarth Gallery in Provincetown, MA, and has been represented by the Nevin Kelly Gallery in Washington, DC. She has had more than 20 solo shows and has participated in numerous juried and group exhibitions. Ellyn works in a variety of media; her recent solo show in the fall of 2009, was composed of paintings made entirely of tar. Her work is rooted in the beauty and perfect functionality of biological structures. “Twelve Linear Feet,” her abstract mixed media mural, is the largest painting in the District of Columbia City Hall Collection, a distinction in which she takes particular, if perhaps perverse, pleasure. Another twelve-foot mural hangs in the Time Warner Building in Manhattan. Ellyn teaches encaustic (wax) painting at the Washington Glass School and in her studio and curates, with Sondra Arkin, the Zeitgeist series of exhibitions featuring artists responding to a selected issue important to our moment in time. Ellyn’s website is www.eweissart.com and she blogs as www.GessoHead.org.
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Marc Kirschner, Board of Directors

Marc Kirschner is the founder and General Manager of TenduTV. TenduTV distributes dance-related content through 70 top digital platforms, including iTunes, Hulu, CinemaNow and Comcast’s Fancast.com. These partners and others enable audiences to consume and purchase dance content on 200 million devices in 10 countries, including iPads, Blu-Ray players, smart phones and internet-enabled televisions. Kirschner oversees TenduTV’s content acquisition efforts and distribution partnerships, and works closely with industry leaders to ensure the protection of dance in the digital age. Kirschner created the concept of digital licensing for choreography and executed the first such licensing deals in the dance industry. Prior to TenduTV, Kirschner ran his own digital media strategy consultancy, advising content owners such as the United States Tennis Association and producers of programming for leading networks such as Discovery, Discovery HD Theater and National Geographic on strategies to prepare for emerging distribution opportunities and revenue models. He was also the publisher of The Short List, a local content and guidebook company that is now part of Time Out. Kirschner received his MBA from Columbia Business School and lives in New York with his wife, Susanna, who is a member of Jennifer Muller/The Works. He currently sits on the advisory committee of Dance/NYC.

Michael Bettmann, Board of Directors

Michael Bettmann was raised in the New York metropolitan area, graduated from Dartmouth College and Einstein Medical School, and did post-graduate training in Radiology at Beth Israel Hospital, Boston. He has been Professor of Radiology and Vice Chair for Interventional Services at Wake Forest University School of Medicine for the last five years. He has published over 125 articles in peer reviewed journals and has given hundreds of invited presentations around the country and internationally. He currently serves on two journal editorial boards, and serves as chair of the Promotion Committee at WFU School of Medicine, of the professional Education Committee of the American Heart Association and of the Appropriateness Criteria Committee of the American College of Radiology. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Natural History Museum of the Adirondacks.