Our Advisory Board

Steve Bromage

Steve Bromage is Executive Director of the Maine Historical Society, a 200 year-old private nonprofit whose mission is to preserve and share Maine’s story. 

Steve focuses on how the history field can evolve to meet the needs and interests of contemporary audiences. He brings experience in institutional change, innovative collaboration, and the development of forward-looking non-profit management models.

Steve and his exceptional team work closely with the community to create programs, exhibitions, and digital resources that provide people who care about Maine with opportunities to learn, reflect, share, engage, and connect. Recent initiatives have explored immigration, the changing paper industry, 13,000 years of Wabanaki presence and leadership, L.L.Bean’s contributions to Maine’s economy and identity, and how Maine fits into the national dialog about race and equity. Steve has led the development of the Maine Memory Network, MHS’s nationally-recognzied statewide digital museum.  

Prior to joining MHS, Steve helped found the online Disability History Museum and produce the award-winning NPR documentary Beyond Affliction: The Disability History Project. Steve has an M.A. in History from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and received his B.A. from the University of Richmond.

Gavrila A. Brotz

Gavrila A. Brotz is an AV Preeminent Rated attorney who focuses her practice on health care litigation, business and contract disputes, and provides trial and appellate support.

As part of her business litigation practice, she handles general commercial litigation cases that involve issues including business torts, breach of contract disputes, and statutory claims.  Ms. Brotz has assisted in the defense of healthcare facilities in various class action and individual claims alleging breach of data privacy and data security issues.

Ms. Brotz is part of a team of lawyers that handles strategic issues for healthcare providers to protect data created under various medical quality review functions.  She assists healthcare facilities and practitioners in addressing requests for information sought under Article X, section 25 of the Florida Constitution, commonly known as Amendment 7, The Patients’ Right to Know about Adverse Medical Incidents.  As part of her practice, Ms. Brotz has appeared throughout the State of Florida, litigating before the Courts regarding how to interpret the constitutional provision and its effects on discovery, use, and admissibility of such materials.

Ms. Brotz has counseled clients on privacy matters and other corporate governance issues.  She has also published articles regarding legislation and litigation concerning information protection and data breach.

Maile Buker

Maile Buker, a Fractional Chief Marketing Officer with national consulting firm Chief Outsiders, is a transformational marketing leader with diverse experience shaping iconic brands, growing customer loyalty and building brand equity. She produces solid results with winning strategies and flawless execution, while delivering an exceptional consumer experience.  

An energizing, authentic and purpose-driven leader, Maile is recognized as being collaborative and curious, with strategic thought leadership, a passion for business and strong bias for action. 

Formerly Head of Marketing at Hannaford Supermarkets, Eastern Mountain Sports and Timberland Footwear, Maile now brings her expertise to the Board of Directors for Portland Ovations, Creative Portland, Maine Food & Beverage Education Center, and the Maine Lobster Marketing Collaborative. Prior to Maile’s relocation to Portland, Maine, she served on the Board of the Historic Music Hall in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. 

Maile is dedicated to building both Maine’s business and creative economy, believing that a symbiotic relationship exists between the two, contributing to the overall vitality and prosperity of a community. When not building bridges, Maile can be found exploring Maine’s islands on her Vespa, captaining an all-women team in the US National Toboggan Championships, or hosting Velvet Sunday Supper Salons in her loft. 

David Green

David Green has been an Actor, Director, Singer, Musical Theatre Coach and Recording Artist for over forty years. His credits include Broadway shows, National Tours, Television roles and numerous Original Cast recordings.

Adam Guettel

Adam Guettel is a composer, lyricist, and teacher living in New York City. He wrote the music and lyrics for The Light in the Piazza, with a book by Craig Lucas, which premiered on Broadway at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater in 2005, and won 6 Tony Awards, including Best Score and Co-Orchestrations for Guettel. In 2019, his work on Aaron Sorkin’s To Kill a Mockingbird was nominated for a Tony Award for best score. His musical Floyd Collins, with a book by Tina Landau won the Lucille Lortel for best musical, and the Obie Award for best music. His musical, Saturn Returns (recorded as Myths and Hymns) was produced at the Public Theater in 1998. He has several shows in the works, including Millions, which is being developed by Sonia Friedman in the United Kingdom. He has won the Stephen Sondheim Award (1990), the ASCAP New Horizons Award (1997) and The American Composers Orchestra Award (2005). He attended Yale University, and received an honorary doctorate from Lehman College in 2007. His musical, Days of Wine and Roses had its world premiere in 2023 at the Atlantic Theater Company's Linda Gross Theater in New York City, and is now playing at Broadway's Studio 54. 

Elizabeth Horton

Elizabeth Horton is a marketing strategist and storyteller with more than 20 years of experience. Simmer Public Relations was founded to tell meaningful stories about good food and farming. 

Elizabeth talks with her mouth full—full of the national food scene and full of ambition to uncover the real story. As the founder of Simmer PR, Elizabeth lives in a state of food ‘culturing’. For Simmer clients and collaborators, the alchemy of any story lies in the people behind the brands as much as the local flavor. Simmer PR connects not just to clients but also to readers who find a similar curiosity to know and feel where their food comes from.  

Simmer PR clients have included Organic Valley, Beyond Good, California Olive Ranch, Coombs Family Farms, Pre 100% Grass-fed Beef, SunOpta, The Ecology School, and Wolfe’s Neck Center for Agriculture & The Environment, with coverage in New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Washington Post, Forbes, Bloomberg, Martha Stewart Living, Real Simple, Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, Saveur, Travel & Leisure, WIRED, NPR, CBS Evening News and The TODAY Show. 

Previously, Elizabeth led PR in-house at Organic Valley, America’s largest cooperative of organic farmers. Under Elizabeth’s direction, her team landed message-driven media coverage of 1.5 billion for three years. Organic Valley was the first all-organic brand to reach $1 billion in sales. In Santiago, Chile, Elizabeth led PR for the country image campaign of Chile. From the Atacama Desert to Patagonia, she worked with diverse media to introduce Chilean seafood, wine, tourism and trade.  

A food lover and passionate home cook, Elizabeth’s personal recipes have been featured in Bon Appétit and other media. She grew up on Cousins Island, and gathered eggs as a young girl on her grandparents’ dairy in Blue Hill. Today, she resides in Portland with her son Ben where they cook, eat and repeat. 

Kayo Iwama

Kayo Iwama, Head of Program for the Graduate Vocal Arts Program at the Bard Conservatory, has performed extensively with singers such as Christópheren Nomura, Lucy Shelton and Dawn Upshaw throughout North America, Europe, and Japan, in venues such as the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center, Weill Recital Hall, Boston’s Jordan Hall, the Gardner Museum, Seiji Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood, the Kennedy Center, Tokyo’s Yamaha Hall, and the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris.

She was previously on the music staffs of the Steans Institute at the Ravinia Festival, The Tanglewood Music Center, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and has held teaching positions at the Hartt School of Music, the Boston Conservatory and the New England Conservatory of Music.

She earned a Bachelors of Music degree at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and a Masters of Music at SUNY Stony Brook, where she studied with Gilbert Kalish as a Graduate Council Fellow. She also attended the Salzburg Music Festival, the Banff Music Center, the Music Academy of the West, and the Tanglewood Music Center, where she worked with such artists as Margo Garrett, Martin Isepp, Graham Johnson, Martin Katz, and Erik Werba.

Formerly a resident of Boston for many years, she was featured numerous times on WGBH radio and was pianist and music director of the critically acclaimed Cantata Singers Chamber Series, programs devoted to rarely heard works of art song and vocal chamber music. Iwama can be heard on CD on the Well-Tempered label, with baritone Christópheren Nomura in Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin, and on two ISMM discs devoted to French mélodies and the songs of Schumann with tenor Ingul Ivan Oak.

Judy Kaye

Judy Kaye received the 2012 Tony Award, her second, (the first in 1988 as Carlotta in Phantom) as well as the Drama Desk, and the Outer Critics Circle Awards for her work as the high-flying Duchess Estonia Dulworth in Nice Work If You Can Get It. She was also nominated for Mamma Mia! and Souvenir. Ms. Kaye came to prominence playing Lily Garland in the original production of On The 20th Century. She twice received the Theater LA Ovation Award for her work in Ragtime and as the melodically challenged Florence Foster Jenkins in Souvenir. In a career spanning 5 decades, she has played theaters and concert halls across America and Europe in roles as diverse as Lucy Van Pelt, Rizzo, Maria Von Trapp, Emma Goldman, Mrs. Lovett, and Grandma Kurnitz in Lost in Yonkers. Her recent Broadway appearances include roles in Cinderella, Wicked and Anastasia. She played Eurydice in Orpheus In The Underworld, Musetta in La Boheme, and Lucy Lockett in The Beggar’s Opera at The Santa Fe Opera. She has sung with symphony orchestras throughout the US and Europe, and twice at the White House. Ms. Kaye has many recordings and is the voice of Kinsey Millhone in the Sue Grafton Alphabet Mystery Series for Random House Audio.

Evan Leatherwood

Evan Leatherwood is the president and co-founder of Hirsch Leatherwood, a strategic communications firm.

He is also co-author of The World’s Your Stage (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads), the first ever management book for artists and entrepreneurs in the fine performing arts.

His writing has appeared in The Nation, The New York Daily News, USA Today, and The Catholic Herald, and online at Huffington Post Tech, Editor & Publisher, Variety, and The Columbia Journalism Review. He co-wrote the documentary The Media: Journalism in Crisis, which premiered on WNET, New York’s PBS station and America’s premier public media company.

At Fordham University, he served as a Slifka Fellow, Journalist-in-Residence, and Senior Associate Director for Communications at the Schwartz Center for Media, Public Policy, & Education. Before Fordham, he worked as a producer at WNET, New York Public Media, and in publishing at W. W. Norton & Company. He got his start in marketing and communications at GROUP SJR, where he was a managing editor and a managing director.

Evan grew up in California, Alabama, and New Mexico, and has a degree in English from Yale. For fun, he climbs rocks, reads science fiction and fantasy books, and studies medieval history. He lives in the Hudson Valley.

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Audrey Luna

Audrey Luna is grateful to have a career singing, teaching voice and Alexander Technique. She currently teaches at Miami University, has taught Alexander Technique, Voice and Vocal Chamber Music on faculty at SongFest, Salzburg Chamber Music Festival, The Grandin Festival, The Schmidt Institute, Savannah Choral/Vocal Institute and given masterclasses across the US, Canada and Europe. She has mentored her students to win competitions and hold young artist positions such as: The Metropolitan Opera National Council Awards, New York Oratorio Society, NATSAA Competitions, Santa Fe Opera, Glimmerglass Opera, Ravinia Festival, Chanticleer, as well as singing in opera houses nationally and internationally.

Since her AmSAT certification in 2013, she has been teaching AT workshops, classes and private lessons largely focusing on singing and vocal function. Ms. Luna has performed in prominent venues such as Salzburger Festspiel, Schleswig-Holstein Festival, the Ludwigsburg Schloss Festival, Mettlach Chamber Music Festival, Lucerne Festival, Jerusalem Festival, Shanghai International Spring Festival, Lexington Bach Festival, Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival and the Konzerthaus Wien, Berlin Philharmonie, Wigmore Hall, Queens Hall, Bach Akademie, the Louvre, St. John the Divine and The Kennedy Center.

Ms. Luna’s career began in Germany singing dozens of opera roles as a fest soloist in Bremen and as a guest soloist throughout Germany. Critics claim that she is, “musically and theatrically first class...with technical sovereignty, she laid before us so much warmth, expression, and sensitivity that it was pure joy.” Ms. Luna can be heard on the Bonneville Classics, Oehms Classics, and arsmoderna labels.

Jeannie Mattson

Jeannie has been part of the team at Wolfe's Neck Center since 2014, heading up all fundraising, events, marketing and communications, and community outreach efforts. Prior to that she worked in state government and electoral politics in Maine, serving in roles in the Speaker's Office and in the Office of the Attorney General. Jeannie lives in Freeport with her husband and two boys.

Malcolm J. Merriweather

Grammy nominated conductor, Malcolm J. Merriweather, is Director of the New York Philharmonic Chorus and Music Director of New York City’s, The Dessoff Choirs and Orchestra.

He has conducted ensembles in venues that include Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Madison Square Garden, Westminster Abbey, and at the Vatican before Pope Francis. His repertoire covers everything from Bach to the world premiere recording of The Ballad of the Brown King by Margaret Bonds (AVIE Records).

The baritone studied with Rita Shane and has been featured as a soloist throughout the United States and has premiered dozens of contemporary solo works. He was a fellowship recipient at Tanglewood.

He is an Associate Professor at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York and has also joined the faculty at Manhattan School of Music. He was the founding Artistic Director of “Voices of Haiti,” a 60-member children’s choir in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, operated by the Andrea Bocelli Foundation.

Dr. Merriweather has earned degrees from Eastman, Manhattan School of Music, and Syracuse University and was a fellow at Tanglewood. He is on the faculty at Brooklyn College. Connect with him on Twitter and Instagram @maestroweather and at malcolmjmerrweather.com

Lynn Shafer

The goal of the gardener is to experience that moment when all the elements--water, nutrients, weather, the human touch--combine for perfection with our own personal sense of beauty. As witness to that transitory time, you realize one's own limitation in this process. Instinctively, the plants perform their signature display in changing harmonies, always with variations, never quite the same. Within the horticultural symphony of bloom or fragrance, fruit or foliage, we, the humbled facilitators, play a minor role for such a grand reward, and must marvel at the surrounding abundance that nature courteously provides.

Paula Volent

Paula Volent is Vice President and Chief Investment Officer at The Rockefeller University, a private graduate university in New York City focused on the biological and medical sciences.  Ms. Volent is responsible for the oversight and management of the University’s endowment. Prior to joining Rockefeller University in August 2021, Ms. Volent was the Chief Investment Officer and Senior Vice President at Bowdoin College, a liberal arts College in Brunswick, Maine.  Prior to joining Bowdoin in July 2000, Ms. Volent was a Senior Associate at the Yale University endowment under the leadership of David Swensen.  Ms. Volent has a BA from the University of New Hampshire; a master’s degree in Art History from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University; a Certificate in Conservation from the Conservation Center at NYU, with a specialization in the conservation of works of art on paper; and an MBA from the Yale School of Management. Prior to focusing on endowment management, Paula worked as a paper conservator at the New-York Historical Society, the San Francisco Palace of Fine Arts, the LA County Museum of Art, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. She also ran a private paper conservation studio in Los Angeles, California. She serves on the Board of Directors of MSCI, Inc., as Vice Chairman of the Board of Advisors of the Yale School of Management, a member of the Investment Committee of the Pritzker Family Foundation, a Trustee of the Skowhegan School of Art and Painting, an Investment Committee Member of the Rockefeller Foundation, and a Board Member of 1stDibs and MSCI.  Ms. Volent was named one of the “100 Most Influential Women in U.S. Finance by Barron’s in 2020.