THE FOLK COLLECTIVE: The Folk Collective is a quarterly gathering of twelve select artists, musicians, and cultural thought leaders. Through an active exchange of ideas, creative collaboration, and partnership, we aim to foster and develop sustainable channels to invite and welcome diverse audiences, artists, and conversations to the Passim stage. Alastair Moock is an award-winning singer-songwriter; a Grammy-nominated family musician; social justice and Songwriting educator for all ages; and co-founder of The Opening Doors Project, an anti-racist music organization. The Boston Globe calls him "one of the town's best and most adventurous songwriters," and The Washington Post says, "every song is a gem." Anju is a singer, songwriter, producer, and performer shaped by the people and places in Minnesota and Massachusetts. Their music conjures imaginary lovers, scents of citrus, and visions of hairy brown skin under the sun. Anju was highlighted by NPR's All Songs Considered as an outstanding Tiny Desk Contest entrant. They are currently teaching young musicians piano, violin, and guitar and working on their debut full-length album. Maxfield Anderson is an American roots multi-instrumentalist, teacher, writer, and music director living in Somerville, MA. As an artist, Maxfield aims to bring new light to honored traditions and to share the joy of making music with others. Award-winning Tlingit artist Kim Moberg was born in Juneau, Alaska, and currently calls Cape Cod, MA home. Kim began playing guitar at age 14, but severe stage fright kept her from becoming a professional performer. In 2014 Kim set out to overcome her stage fright and wrote her first song. Kim teamed with Grammy-nominated producer Jon Evans to record two albums: "Above Ground" and "Up Around The Bend." Both have received worldwide airplay, charting on the Folk Alliance International Folk DJ charts and the NACC Radio charts. Kim and Jon are collaborating on her third album, which features songs that tie ancient prophecies to our current social environment. Kim's recognitions include the 2021 Rocky Mountain Songwriting Contest Finalist, the 2021 Great American Songwriting Contest Folk/Americana Finalist, and the 2020 CT Folk Grassy Hill Songwriting Competition Winner. Lydia "LovelySinger" Harrell is one of Boston's musical treasures. Her sultry, soulful voice and evocative songwriting have garnered her the attention and respect of the nation's finest musicians and venues. Jazz and soul are where her heart is; however, Harrell has shown an unbreakable ability to mold herself into any musical situation. Whether performing with the Boston Pops, serenading NBA fans with America's national anthem, or lending her vocal talents to chart-topping deep house singles by British record label Reel People Music, Harrell's dedication to extracting the pure essence of the song is unmatched. In addition to her accomplishments as a musical artist, Lydia is a film/TV, voiceover, and theater actress. Made up of a diverse cohort of twelve artists in the Greater Boston region, The Folk Collective has taken this challenge head-on, performing concerts in the club as well as out in the community that righteously push the boundaries of folk music…from themed concerts like Re-Imagining Lilith Fair to curated festivals such as We Black Folk to timely shows like the Indigenous Peoples Day event and the Inaugural Pride Month Celebration… The Folk Collective is not simply talking the talk. They walk it. But it hasn’t been easy. Getting twelve talented artists of wildly diverse backgrounds together, most of whom did not know each other, to join forces, collaborate, and have hard discussions is not simple. Thankfully there was a plan. The Collective meet frequently and consistently to plan, to hash out, to discuss, to share meals…In doing so, they’ve become their own community. And now, as the Collective is deep in the middle of its second and final season (a new cohort will be chosen for 2024-2026 season), one of the most exciting developments is the plan to use what has worked (and what hasn’t) from this exciting trailblazing initiative and create a template for other organizations to follow. Plans are in the works for The Folk Collective to present at the annual Folk Alliance conference. Other organizations around the country are taking notice of what Passim has tried to accomplish and are intrigued. Is this something that can be replicated? If so, what are the tools organizations need? The Folk Collective hope to answer those questions. They are a broad representation of a community, performing music “of the people” for their community. Simply put, they are folk musicians.
Arsenal Center for the Arts
Alan Palevsky grew up sailing on Great South Bay on Eastern Long Island. He started by crewing for his older brother in the Blue Jay Class in 1959, graduating to the Windmill in 1965. This boat was a Clark Mills design as the next boat up after the Optimist Pram. They took 2nd in the Windmill Nationals in 1968. In 1974 Alan started racing the Tornado, the Olympic class catamaran. He raced that class through 1988 and in 1986 he was ranked 10th in the US. He also raced Interclubs in the Marblehead Frostbite fleet from 1982 through 1990. Finally, he has been evening racing Solings on Boston Harbor since 1981. Palevsky earned a Bachelor's degree in physics from Williams College in 1973 and a PhD in physics from MIT in 1980. He spent 37 years at Raytheon and retired in 2018 at the level of Director. His work at Raytheon was across many disciplines including high-power microwave tubes, flat panel displays, and satellite communications. Since retiring, he has been consulting part-time in the electronics industry. He has also volunteered at Courageous Sailing in Charlestown, Massachusetts, helping maintain their boats.
Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation
Sam Ransbotham is a professor of analytics at Boston College’s Carroll School of Management. He teaches “Analytics in Practice” and “Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence.” Ransbotham served as a senior editor at Information Systems Research, associate editor at Management Science, and academic contributing editor at MIT Sloan Management Review. He co-hosts the Me, Myself, and AI podcast, available on all major platforms. Ransbotham received a National Science Foundation Career Program award “in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education,” for his analytics-based research in security. He was also honored with an INFORMS ISS Sandra A. Slaughter Early Career Award, which recognizes “early-career individuals who are on a path towards making outstanding intellectual contributions to the information systems discipline.” Ransbotham earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering, an MBA, and a doctorate, all from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Before earning his doctorate, he founded a software company with a globally diverse client list including the United Nations IAEA (Vienna), FAO (Rome), WHO (Geneva), and WMO (London). Since 2015, he has been an editor for MIT SMR’s Big Ideas initiatives, including Artificial Intelligence and Business Strategy, and Competing With Data & Analytics.
Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation
George Mutter trained in medicine at Harvard and Columbia, and is currently a Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School. He is a prolific scientist and educator, having authored over 120 scientific papers, and delivered numerous invited lectures internationally. Bernard Fishman is an Egyptologist trained at Columbia U. and U. of Pennsylvania. He worked in Egypt with the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago before becoming a nonprofit institution administrator. He is presently the Director of the Maine State Museum in Augusta, Maine.
Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation
Dr. Tomas Villalón has dedicated his life to solving the issues of the mining and metals industry. He received his PhD Boston University, and BSc from MIT, going on to co-found Phoenix Tailings in 2019 with a mission of building the world’s first fully clean mining and metals production company. Tomas is an expert in the sustainable extraction of critical minerals from tailings and environmentally responsible rare earth refining.
Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation
Boris Martin Boris believes that every engineer today can play a role in helping humanity heal and adapt to climate change, and that profound impact happens when engineers embrace their own acts of generosity as a journey of personal transformation. Boris is the CEO of Engineers Without Borders USA. His personal commitment to building positive, respectful, and mutually accountable partnerships across the world mirrors EWB-USA’s long-term commitment to communities that have allowed the organization to understand the deep complexities and nuanced challenges that resilient infrastructure can address. Perhaps above all, Boris is proud to contribute to EWB-USA’s global impact projects that provide reliable access to safe water, renewable energy, nutritious food, and improved economic opportunities for thousands of underserved communities across the USA and around the world. His commitment is to make EWB-USA a leading Community Engineering organization and a catalyst and partner for Community Engineering around the world. Dr. Chris Lombardo Dr. Lombardo is currently employed at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences as the Associate Director of Undergraduate Studies and Lecturer in Electrical Engineering. His teaching focuses on electronics, engineering design, and the intersection of engineering and human centered design with a focus on low resource settings. Dr. Lombardo began volunteering with EWB-USA in 2004 and has been an active volunteer ever since. He serves as the faculty advisor of the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences chapter of EWB-USA and has held numerous leadership roles both locally and nationally including the Curriculum Chair of the EWB-USA/ASCE Global Leadership Program, Faculty Leadership Committee, and is a former member and Past President of the EWB-USA Board of Directors.
Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation
Susan Wilson is a widely respected photographer, author, and public historian who has written and lectured about Boston history for the past three decades. She is the official House Historian of the Omni Parker House, an Affiliate Scholar at Brandeis University’s Women’s Studies Research Center, and an Honorary Fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Her most recent books are Heaven, By Hotel Standards: The History of the Omni Parker House (2019) and Women and Children First: The Trailblazing Life of Susan Dimock, M.D. (2023).
Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation
Ronald W. Bailey is a Professor in the Department of African American Studies at the University of Illinois, serving as department Head from 2012 to 2022. He is a 1965 graduate of Evans County History School in Claxton, GA and a 1969 Phi Beta Kappa graduate with a BA in Liberal Arts (Cross-Cultural Studies) from Michigan State University’s Justin Morrill College. His undergraduate major included fluency in Russian and a certificate from Moscow State University. He holds an MA in Political Science from Stanford and a Ph.D. in Black Studies from Stanford, one of the first such degrees awarded in the United States. He has taught at Fisk, Cornell, Northwestern, University of Mississippi, and Northeastern, where he chaired the Department of African American Studies for eight years. He also served as Vice President for Academic Affairs at South Carolina State University and at Knoxville College, and as a senior scientist with the Education Development Center, Inc. Bailey’s publications include Introduction to Afro-American Studies: A Peoples College Primer; Remembering Medgar Evers . . . For a New Generation; Let Us March On: Civil Rights Photographs of Ernest Withers, Jr.; and Black Business Enterprise: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. His articles have appeared in the Journal of Social Issues, Journal of Negro Education, Agricultural History, Review of Black Political Economy, Black Scholar, Souls: Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society, and the Journal of African American History. NSF and NEH grants supported the development of two website projects he initiated: www.dignubia.org and www.nubianet.org. He was also a co-founder of ACT-Roxbury (Art, Culture, and Trade—Roxbury), an organization that now operates the Roxbury Center for the Arts @ Hibernia Hall and the Roxbury Film Festival. Bailey has consulted on museum, curriculum, and technology projects. He was also the principal investigator of a project funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services to build capacity in six African American museums in the Savannah area. He is the current co-principal investigator of a six-year digital tools project called AFRO PUBLISHING WITHOUT WALLS, or AFRO PWW-2, funded for the past six years by the Mellon Foundation.
Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation
Audrey Schulman co-founded HEET in 2008. Featured in the Washington Post as a Climate Hero, she created the first-in-the-nation statewide zoomable public map of utility-reported gas leaks. She started the Large Volume Leak Study, which discovered a way for gas utilities to identify super-emitting gas leaks and repair them. She has helped develop HEET’s innovative solution to transition gas utilities from gas to networked geothermal, or systems of networked ground source heat pumps. Schulman is also the author of six novels, which have been translated into 12 languages and reviewed by The New Yorker, The Economist and CNN.
Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation
Dave Broker
Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation
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