Meet the Team
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Founder & Executive DirectorAva Sophia is a vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, educator, and community organizer. Originally from the Allston-Brighton neighborhood of Boston, Ava is dedicated to the growth of art spaces in the city of Boston and beyond as opportunities for community building and economic empowerment.
Ava is a graduate of the world-renowned Berklee College of Music and she is continuing to share her music locally in and around New England. In October 2019, Ava released her debut EP, “To See and Hear Hxrself”, a project dedicated to exploring the relationship between femininity and vulnerability, and empowering women/femmes of color to feel and express our emotions to the fullest extent. In 2023, Ava released her second project “You Are Where You Belong”. This project was funded by the City of Boston and included a stipend for three youth musicians to contribute as interns to the writing and production of the album. She has performed at stages all over Boston and curated numerous event spaces as well.
Ava considers education and community work to be at the center of her artistic practice. She has built and supported high quality music programming within arts non-profit spaces across Boston, solidifying her as a leader within the Creative Youth Development sector. She has served at organizations including Sociedad Latina, Boys and Girls Club of Boston, and Zumix. In her current role as Manager of Programs at Boston Raising Powerful Musicians, she continues to strive for students to foster their most authentic selves through music education.
Ava’s skills intersect at the heart of her mission to use music as a tool to elevate underrepresented voices and in doing so, create a more equitable world.
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Board Member, TreasurerMarcia is a portrait photographer based in Boston, Massachusetts. With a background in Business Management and entrepreneurship, she is currently expanding her knowledge in business analytics. As the owner of PhotosbyMarcia, she has built a substantial client base, specializing in event and portrait photography.
Marcia’s long-term vision includes creating a physical space for creatives to collaborate, learn, and grow artistically while learning to run a successful business. Her project, Expressive Art Studios, aims to foster creativity and innovation within the art community.
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Board Member, Advisory CommitteeBrian Allen is an experienced legal professional (JD, 2002) and business manager/consultant with a demonstrated history of providing general business management oversight, project management, and analysis for organizations of all kinds. They have in-depth knowledge and experience in corporate law, including entity creation (for-profit and nonprofit, C-Corp, S-Corp, and LLC), domestic and foreign incorporation across all states, contract negotiation and drafting, and trademarking.
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Board Member, Fundraising Director
By specializing in multiple areas of the music industry, Juanita Murcia (she/her) is like no other person in this competitive business. By combining her Colombian culture and her skills and talents, she brings a unique perspective as a business-woman/performer/producer/arranger and is able to bring something vivacious and fresh to the table.
Born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia, Juanita has always been surrounded by a very culturally diverse background. As a child she was immersed in world of Colombian music ranging from boleros and bambucos to salsa and mapalé. Her mother's family was one of singers and guitarists so from a very young age she was invited to sing at various events. As she grew up, she started being immersed in a more globalized world that introduced pop and rock to Juanita, genres with which she fell in love. She kept performing but now she did so independently.
As life kept happening, Juanita started developing different passions and skills different than music. She started getting into the world of math, literature and sports and they became essential to her life. She completed the literature AP's in both Spanish and English and also won the math Olympiads from her home country. All of these achievements also helped her develop her unique skill set. As she did these things, she never left music aside, in fact, she developed an interest for musical theatre and she started performing in theaters around the country as much as possible.
Later on, she attended Berklee College of Music on a partial World Tour scholarship and started thinking which fields of study would help combine her skill set to the best extent and how she could use them to benefit the music industry with them. And so she decided to double major in Music Business/Management and Contemporary writing and Production and double minor in Music Recording and Musical Theater Performance. These fields of study, not only enhanced her abilities but her develop and polish them so they would be ready to use in the real world.
At Berklee she gained a lot of real-world experience as well that made her become a very competent professional. She participated in various BPC shows and shows around the campus in general as lead and background vocalist. She sang around Boston as part of the Summer Series edition at Berklee and at different venues. She also participated in the Berklee Popular Music Institute where she got to perform A&R work and pitch artists to go to festivals. Then she acted as artist manager to develop these artists and later on, she acted as tour manager to bring them to Governors Ball and Midtown festivals. She was also immersed in the production world working in real life studios and mixing with professional consoles as well as she got the experience to arrange different pieces and record/direct them with live bands.
Currently, she is managing different artists like: Ed Rox, Sofía Padilla and JP Faundez and she is planning the Midtown festival. She is also performing around Boston and producing and arranging the demos for her artist Sofía Padilla. She wishes to keep on working in the industry and help as many artists as possible to thrive
