resource
Update
event
FAI 2024
NEWS
Partner
Region
Announcing our 2025 Annual General Meeting and the 2024 Board Election Results
December 16, 2024
resource
Update
event
FAI 2024
NEWS
Partner
Region
Join us on March 6, 2025 at 2 pm CT for a virtual version of our 2025 Annual General Meeting (AGM)! Everyone in the community is welcome and encouraged to attend.
If you’re a voting member of FAI, you’ll be receiving an email soon with the agenda, meeting documents, and a Zoom link to join the AGM (with the ability to participate and ask questions).
Non-members are also invited to join! You’ll be able to view the live AGM on our YouTube channel.
Newly Elected and Re-Elected Directors
We’re excited to announce the results of our 2024 FAI Board Election! We’ll be welcoming three new members, in addition to the re-election of two current board members. Each director serves a three-year term, beginning at the AGM in March:
Abby Altman
Club Manager
Passim
Cambridge, MA, USA
Abby started working at non-profit arts organization Passim shortly after moving to the Boston area in 2013. She is now the manager for Club Passim, a 110-seat year-round listening room in Cambridge, MA. As the Club Manager, she supervises and trains the club staff, manages and engineers many shows in the club, coordinates the campfire. and Down Home Up Here festivals, and is an extra pair of hands wherever they’re needed. She also administers many of Passim’s grant programs, including the Iguana Music Fund, Gecko Fund, Brian O'Donovan Legacy Fund, and Passim Emergency Artist Relief (PEAR) Fund. With no formal sound education, she learned audio engineering on the job and takes pride in now passing that training on to new staff members. She has played violin for several years, though she much prefers being at the sound board to being on the stage. She’s the only person to have two Passim tattoos.
Mary Bragg
Artist, Producer
Mary Bragg
Nashville, TN, USA
"Americana Queen" (Vice/Noisey) Mary Bragg has been heralded by Rolling Stone and NPR for her “gorgeously crafted and executed songs.” Nashville-based and originally from the small town of Swainsboro, Georgia, the singer-songwriter-engineer-producer has produced albums for Grace Pettis, The Accidentals, Helena Hallberg, Stephanie Sammons, Natalie Price, and Jackson Emmer, among others, in addition to her own recent albums. Praised by World Café for her “refined, sumptuously melancholy take on Southern storytelling,” Bragg tours extensively with her band, and also serves as an adjunct Assistant Professor of songwriting at the Berklee College of Music.
Laia Canals
INCUMBENT
Director
Tempi - Roots Music Denmark
Nordic Folk Alliance
Copenhagen, Denmark
Laia Canals is a dynamic leader and connector, committed to strengthening global networks within the folk and roots music industry. Currently, she serves as the Director of the National Organization for Roots Music in Denmark and as Chairperson of Nordic Folk Alliance — FAI’s only international chapter — where she excels in enabling the collaboration between Europe and North America. Over the last two years she served on the Folk Alliance International Board of Directors, where she crafted international brand strategy as the Chair of the Global Expansion Committee and Nominations Committee. Additionally, Laia is a member of the Strategic Committee of the European Folk Network and a Keychange advisor for EU.
Clayton Shelvin
Managing Director
Freight & Salvage
San Francisco, CA, USA
Clayton Shelvin is a performing arts administrator and fundraising professional with over 10 years of experience in driving organizational change in the non-profit sector. Clayton’s work is rooted in equity, community partnership, and social justice. He currently serves as the Managing Director of Freight & Salvage, a 60-year-old music organization in Berkeley, CA. Prior, he was the Director of Programming and Talent Buyer at the Acadiana Center for the Arts. He has worked for various theatre and dance companies as a fundraiser, and served on regional and national boards. He started his fundraising consulting business in 2020, and works with clients to reimagine arts fundraising. Clayton hails from New Orleans, LA and is a proud Ragin Cajun graduate of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette’s performing arts program. His career has been deeply influenced by the local musicians and artists that he encountered throughout Louisiana. He currently resides in San Francisco.
Tina Wroblewski
INCUMBENT
Export Development Program
Folk Canada
Toronto, ON, Canada
Tina Wroblewski, Colombian-born, Toronto-based Producer and Cultural Promoter, is the International Coordinator at the International Indigenous Music Summit (IIMS) The Export Development Program Coordinator (EDP) Folk Music Canada (FMC) Presenter and Audience Engagement Coordinator for Tkaronto Music Festival, responsible for connecting partners and the Outgoing work around Folk music Canada Conference, IIMS and other international projects. She founded “Proyecto Prizmacolor”, a project in Medellín that works to transform educational spaces through the promotion of art and culture. She has served as a jury for awards, including the JUNO Awards, as well as a consultant, curator, and artist liaison for a variety of festivals and conferences.One of the leaders of Eagle Meets the Condor, a Pan-American project with IIMS, Fluvial Conference, and partners in North and South America, she currently serves on the Board of Directors of Folk Alliance International.
Appointments to the Board
The board appointed Tufara Waller Muhammad, Hilary Saunders, and Robert Meitus.. They will begin their terms at the AGM in March 2025.
Tufara Waller Muhammad
Founding Member/Project Manager
Datule’ Artist Collective & Highlander Center
Little Rock, Arkansas, USA
Tufara Waller Muhammad is a multidisciplinary artist, political strategist, popular educator and cultural organizer. She has worked for over 30 years at the nexus of art, culture and justice in the US South and Global South. Tufara Waller Muhammad draws on six generations of her multiracial familial lineage of civically-engaged artists, organizers, spiritual leaders animated by faith and a commitment to justice, healing, cultural preservation, transformation, and manifestation of systems and structures within communities, institutions, and governmental entities.
Hilary Saunders
Managing Editor
No Depression
New York City, NY, USA
Hilary Saunders is the managing editor at No Depression and her previous work has appeared in Paste, ESPN, Next City, The Jewish Daily Forward, and more. She’s a proud member of the Recording Academy, National Press Club, and Society of Professional Journalists, an alumna of the University of Miami, and a unironic believer that rock and roll can save the world.
Robert Meitus
Partner
Meitus Strohm LLP
Bloomington, IN, USA
Meitus is a partner at Meitus Strohm LLP, representing musicians, record labels, filmmakers, authors, and other creatives. He is a professor of law at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law and received his J.D. from Maurer, his masters of international affairs from Columbia University, and his B.A. from Wabash College. He is a Grammy voting member and was named a top music lawyer by Billboard. Meitus has authored several journal articles, including “Revisiting the Derivative Works Exception of the Copyright Act Thirty Years After Mills Music” and promotes acoustic shows through his nonprofit Bloomington Roots.
