ABOUT

Our Team

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Documentary Songwriters wouldn't be able to offer the service it does without the creativity and contributions of its staff and supporters.

DOCUMENTARY SONGWRITERS

Leadership

Caroline Rex-Waller

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Caroline serves as Executive Director of DocSong and is a teacher, facilitator, and writer with over twelve years of experience in non-profit administration and education.

Malcolm Brooks

FOUNDER

Dr. Malcolm Brooks first published the Documentary Songwriting Method as part of his Doctoral dissertation. He founded Documentary Songwriters, as a nonprofit in 2018 and currently serves the organization as an advisor. 

DOCUMENTARY SONGWRITERS

Board of Directors

LaRaun Clayton

BOARD MEMBER

LaRaun Clayton is a United States Army Veteran with 10+ years of Nonprofit Leadership experience. He is currently the Director of a 122- bed Homeless and Mental Health Residential Treatment facility for veterans experiencing homelessness and/or addiction.

Halley Elwell

SECRETARY

Halley is an accomplished bi-coastal singer-songwriter and teacher, at home on stage and in the studio. In addition to performing internationally, has been named by Nashville Songwriter’s Association as “One to Watch.”

Will Foote

BOARD MEMBER & TEACHING ARTIST EDUCATOR

Will is a vocalist and songwriter. He has been instrumental in bringing documentary songs to venues ranging from folk festivals to intimate settings. He has also demonstrated composing melodic themes live on radio.

Rachel Kribbs

Board President

Rachel Kribbs has over a decade of experience working in the arts & culture and nonprofit sectors. She's held positions at some of Cleveland's legacy arts organizations including The Cleveland Orchestra and Cleveland Institute of Music. In these roles she managed and garnered support for a myriad of community programs and initiatives, working alongside world-renowned musicians to guide and support their efforts in the community.

Khalid Taylor

BOARD MEMBER & TEACHING ARTIST EDUCATOR

Khalid Taylor (he/they) is a queer Afrolatinx speaker, personal growth and development consultant, singer, and documentary songwriter.  His focus continues to remain centered on cultivating mindful spaces for people to intentionally re-shape the conversations they have internally with themselves and externally in the relationships they have with their community.

Stanford Thompson

EMERITUS MEMBER

Stanford is a musician and educator who serves as the Founder and Executive Director of Play On Philly and Founding Board Chairman of El Sistema USA – bringing music education to students in underserved areas.

Josie Davis

EMERITUS MEMBER

Josie has performed in a wide range of venues, from Carnegie Hall to the Monte Music Festival in India. She is interested in how music can be used as a form of cultural empowerment to build bridges and strengthen communities.

Jody Kerchner

EMERITUS MEMBER

Jody is a professor at Oberlin College. She specializes in secondary school music and choral music education She has presented keynotes, papers, and led workshops nationally and internationally.

Lisa Whitfield

EMERITUS MEMBER

Lisa is a classically trained violist, improviser, and vocalist who has been an active orchestral and chamber musician in the Cleveland area for over a decade after having spending nearly 20 years performing in New York.

Monica Kelly

EMERITUS MEMBER

Monica serves as Executive Director of Bay Chamber Concerts and Music School. She is also the founder of the Odeon Orchestra, the first youth orchestra for young instrumentalists in the midcoast of Maine.

Chris Finn

EMERITUS MEMBER

Chris Finn has sung and played in churches since childhood, spending 13 years leading a Los Angeles based contemporary music church band. He led the Songs of Oswald Chambers project for DocSong.

Anastasia Fischer

EMERITUS MEMBER

Anastasia serves as president of U.S. Harbors in Rockland, Maine. She also lads her own design firm, the Fischer Design Group. She is a graduate of Bowdoin College with a major in history.

DOCUMENTARY SONGWRITERS

Program Advisors

Gina Dobson

Survivor Stories Program Advisor

Gina Dobson is an actor, screenwriter, and mother of two. She is also a survivor and a wrongly accused felon who is committed to promoting support for abuse victims. She is the co-founder of BAB on 3.

Prince Mubake

New Mainer Program Advisor

Prince Mubake has a bachelor's degree in Economics and a master's degree in Business Administration. He has experience in investment banking, financial service technologies, and auditing. Currently, he is pursuing a program to become a certified Maine educator.

Parivash Rohani

New Mainer Program Advisor

Parivash Rohani is an ICU nurse in Portland who was born and raised in Iran. She emigrated to the US in 1985 and is actively involved in humanitarian, environmental, and interfaith projects. Parivash volunteers for many community works and received the Trailblazer Award in 2017.

DOCUMENTARY SONGWRITERS

Teaching Artists

Alexander Adams

Alex Adams is a middle school music teacher,  guitarist, bassist, banjo player, and puppeteer. He lives and works  in southern Maine where he focuses on bringing new educational experiences into music classrooms and spreads the message that music is for everyone.

Whit Arau

Whit is an environmental chemist with experience in writing, music composition, and podcast production. Whit is interested in documentary songs with queer people and those dealing with chronic health problems.

Emily Bergen

Emily studies at Oberlin Conservatory with a concentration in bass and trained as a Documentary Songwriting Teaching Artist in 2024.

Mimi Bornstein

Mimi Bornstein is a choral director, composer, and documentary songwriter. Choruses under Mimi's direction have performed with noted musicians including the Grammy Award-winning Paul Winter Consort, Paul Sullivan, Theresa Thomason, and Jonathan Edwards. Her compositions have been performed nationally and internationally. 

Zoë Brush

Zoë Brush is from Georgetown Maine. She is in her first year at Oberlin College, where she is a prospective Comparative American Studies major. She loves listening to music and singing, and is currently trying to learn banjo!

Andre Jamal Cardine

Andre Jamal Cardine is a singer-songwriter, music producer, instrumentalist, research scholar, activist, and arranger from Chicago’s south suburbs. He is currently pursuing a PhD program at Indiana University in Ethnomusicology.

Joaquin Contreras 

Joaquin is a multi-instrumentalist and documentary songwriter. He focuses on writing documentary songs with families and communities in order to help them preserve their histories and cultures.

Phil Cotter

Phil Cotter is an Emmy-nominated composer/producer, whose clients include Cincinnati Ballet, Playhouse in the Park and PBS.

Hazel Delehey

Hazel is a documentary songwriter and studio vocalist. She pioneered the first documentary song for a documentary film, a project for the High Mountain Institute in Colorado.

Caleb Edwards

Caleb is a composer, vocalist, multi-instrumentalist. He has created and recorded vocal, string, and percussion arrangements for numerous artists. He attends the Berklee College of Music in Boston. 

Sean GoLightly

Arizona-born, Golightly cut his teeth first in church, then on the street. Now, he makes a sound somewhere between country, folk, blues, and soul on stages of all sizes. Best described as americana, Golightly's music emphasizes story and live performance.

Kiyoshi Hayashi

Violinist Kiyoshi Hayashi is very passionate about using music as a means to bring individuals and communities together, to heal and positively uplift people’s lives, and to inspire others to follow their passions. 

Daniella Hope

Daniella is a jazz vocalist from the South Side of Chicago. She began her career in the Chicago Children's Choir through which she was able to perform around the world in places including Italy, South Africa, and India.

Victoria Humphreys

Victoria Humphreys is from a small, coastal town in North Carolina and recently graduated with an MA in Songwriting from the Institute of Contemporary Music Performance in London. She looks forward to researching the benefits of documentary songwriting on society.

Isabel Hyman

Isabel Hyman (she/her) is a current student at Oberlin College in Ohio studying Music and Geosciences. She learned the Documentary Songwriting Method in the winter of 2024 and has written songs both with peers and the Find Our Voices (FOV) organization.

Chloë Isis

Chloë is a songwriter and vocalist who conducted the first-ever live documentary songwriting session on radio. She is interested in writing DocSongs with children, the deaf, and those processing grief.

Stephanie Judy

Stephanie Judy is a musician living in Kaslo, British Columbia—a village (pop. 900) in the mountainous southeast corner of the province. Her life-long engagement in performing arts and arts education favours the participatory and inclusive.

Phoebe King

Phoebe is a singer-songwriter and Ukulele player. She lives in Jamaica with her husband and teaches Ukulele to all ages-in person and online. She spends her time as a mermaid swimming in the ocean and performing in her mermaid tail. She aims to spread joy and inspire a passion for music and the ocean.

Lalia Mangione

One of 11 siblings, Lalia has been surrounded by chaos and competition her whole life. At a young age, Lalia turned to music as a way to find peace and order in between arm wrestling with her brothers (and winning) and trying to get a word in edgewise with her sisters (not winning). Although the chaos of a big family is joyful and fulfilling, she finds individuality and solace in music—a creative outlet full of beauty, order, and passion.

Raphaël Meulemans

Raphaël is a Belgian cellist—he is an engaged musician and a passionate teacher. Raphaël performs mainly as a chamber musician and soloist. His musical experiences have led him to not only play classical music but also traditional folk and rock music.

Alex Millan

Alex Millan is a musician and educator based in Portland, Maine. As a songmaker, she performs & records under the moniker Juniper Ginger. Through Juniper Ginger, Alex weaves tales of intimacy, (dis)connection, navigating grief, and finding home.

Melodi Var Öngel 

Melodi is a humanitarian and musician. In 2019, she debuted her documentary songwriting project Songs Across Boundaries, and followed it with an acclaimed TEDx talk on her work on that project in Cyprus.

Keira Plotkin

Keira is a student at Oberlin College. She trained as Documentary Songwriting Teaching Artist in 2024.

Lisa Redfern

Lisa Redfern is a Maine-based singer and songwriter. For many years, she has taught songwriting with at-risk youth, and more recently made songs with African (and other international ESL students) seeking asylum here in Maine.

Genevieve Roby

A vocalist and songwriter, Genevieve attends Bennington College, where she studies the performing arts and creative writing. She is interested in the ways that music can be used as an means of human connection and understanding.

Clara Schneid

Clara is a community organizer, songwriter, educator, avid biker, and DocSong Teaching Artist in Portland, OR. TA trained since 2021, her projects have spanned from middle school classrooms, to recording for the DocSong Band, to more recent collaborations with domestic violence survivors in Maine.

Matt Smith

Cellist Matthew Smith, is equally active as a performer and educator. In the U.S., he has performed at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D. C. and was a musician-in-residence at the Boston Center for the Arts as a member of the musician-led chamber orchestra, Palaver Strings.

Rebecca Shasberger

Praised for the “maturity and sensitivity” of her playing (Casa Magazine), Cleveland-based cellist Rebecca Shasberger is passionate about loving people and pursuing justice through music. To this end she founded Renovare Music in 2018, a 501(c)3 nonprofit that brings together Rebecca’s extensive experience as a performer, worship leader, and teacher.

Ruby Spencer

Ruby is from Charlottesville, Virginia and is a student at Oberlin College. When not working on songs, they have a passion for writing short pieces of fiction and poetry

Cecelia Swanson

Cecelia is a cellist dedicated to using her performing and teaching as a way to build stronger bonds in her community. She is currently pursuing post-graduate studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music, playing with the award-winning Elless String Quartet, and teaching at the Aurora School of Music.

Jenny Van West

Americana artist Jenny Van West is the founder of the IMC Portland which builds community with recent immigrants through music, and the International Open Mic at Mayo Street Arts. She also produces the twice-weekly national music podcast Postcards. She lives and works with her husband in Portland, Maine.

Jonny Westhorp

Jonny is an English guitarist and songwriter currently living and working in Belgium. He is interested in using music as a way of uniting and integrating marginalized members of society into the community.

Celeste Wicks

Celeste is a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from San Francisco, California, with roots in Portland, Maine. She studied Documentary Songwriting at Oberlin College.

Alex Wilder

Alex is a songwriter, producer, audio engineer, and multi-instrumentalist from Maine, currently based in Nashville. In addition to freelance performance work, he has produced numerous collaborations with DocSong.

Nora Willauer

Nora is a passionate musician and educator, devoted to the relationship between music and community. She is the founder of "Songs of #MeToo" and served as the Executive Director of Documentary Songwriters from 2020-2022. Read more at her website: emwillauer.com

Lena Yang

Lena (Huizhou) Yang is currently studying Musical Studies and Cognitive Science at Oberlin College and Conservatory, expected to graduate in May 2024. As a musician, she is dedicated to doing musicological and ethnomusicological research, playing the accordion, composing, and doing music administration.

DOCUMENTARY SONGWRITERS

Strategic Partners

DocSong's mission is supported by the following partners – we are grateful for their expertise and generosity.

Rick Medrick  |  Boulder, Colorado

“We need 10 or 100 [teaching artists] traveling around inviting others to tell their stories. This would not only have a profound effect on the population in individual terms but also offer the community ways to connect to the commonalities among their stories."