The team

Michael is focused on increasing human connection to reduce loneliness. He is the writer, director and producer of Alive Inside, which won the Sundance Film Festival Audience Award for U.S. Documentary, and the founder of The Alive Inside Foundation. An Architect of Change, he believes we live in a time when great human change is possible. His films aim to help us all be more Alive Inside.

He is also the director of Being Here, a film about a journey through music and mortality. It begins when Brian, an avid surfer, skateboarder and skier, closes the door of his home office and starts writing songs. Nights and weekends for three years, he writes over 300 of them, obsessively. What drives him, nobody knows. A year into the songwriting, he and the people around him find out he has ALS.

Alongside those two films he is producing the sequel documentary, Alive Inside Too, which he believes will transform eldercare and public schools across the US.

Michael is looking for partners in creating world-changing media and human development projects.

Sarah is passionate about transforming the experience of elders and youth. She is a certified storyteller, an end-of-life doula, and the owner of Celebrating Stories, Ltd., dedicated to bringing joy, music and storytelling to elders.

She was an actor in Chicago for many years and now gives historical presentations on women in history. She also teaches workshops at libraries and cultural centers on how to interview the people you love.

Tony, with Michael, came up with the idea of using eldercare centers and the elders in them as a teaching tool. He spearheaded the Alive Inside Together pilot at Healdsburg Senior Living.

It started with one private school and grew to thirteen, bringing 200 to 400 students into the center each month. The students shared music and life with the elders and everybody bloomed. Teachers found freedom in using elders as an educational resource, the students found real purpose in changing elders' lives, and the institution bloomed financially and emotionally.

He and Michael were a third of the way through the follow-up film when Covid hit and made the whole thing impossible. They are working to restart the program. Tony currently consults in elder care and runs a family business in Alaska.

JoAnn spent over three decades in music marketing in Nashville and Los Angeles, working with Miranda Lambert, the Dixie Chicks, Mary J. Blige, Willie Nelson, Enrique Iglesias, Linkin Park, Garth Brooks and Tammy Wynette.

After watching Alive Inside she tracked down the filmmakers and joined forces. She works to fund getting personalized music to the people who need it most.

“If the music industry can't support this cause, then what are we doing it for?”

Itaal is an American composer, producer and musician. He has written songs for Maxwell, Jewel and Enrique Iglesias, and released three solo albums. His song Smooth, co-written with Rob Thomas for Santana's Supernatural, reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and won them the Grammy for Song of the Year.

He runs Alive Inside's partnerships in the music and technology industries.

Fran has worked for over twenty years in geriatric nursing, eldercare, advocacy and dementia education. She is passionate about the idea that there is still joy in life after a diagnosis, and dedicated to finding ways to reduce stigma and support the people living with it.

She manages Connection Thru Music, an Alive Inside-inspired intergenerational program she created at Caregiver Volunteers of Central Jersey, and is a past associate director at the Alzheimer's Association Greater NJ Chapter. She works with other New Jersey non-profits and youth groups to share the power of music and connection.

Fran is a Certified Dementia Care Practitioner, an ASFA Senior Personal Trainer and LTC Fitness Leader, a Brain Fitness Facilitator and a Memory Bridge graduate. She developed the Movement, Music, Memories enrichment programs for people with dementia.

Kelly is an entrepreneur, a certified health coach and an educator in non-pharmaceutical interventions for neurological health. She founded MyMemoryWorx, an online cognitive coaching service, and Peace for Parkinson's, a resource center that includes Rock Steady Boxing.

She holds seven certifications in neuro-intensive programming, including Cognitive Stimulation Therapy. In 2010 she launched the Healing Jukebox, using structured musical engagement to reduce symptoms in seniors and training healthcare staff across more than 45 speaking engagements. She led the tri-state iPod for Elders campaign across Illinois, Indiana and Missouri, and organised screenings of Alive Inside.

She splits her time between Marco Island, Florida and central Illinois, and teaches online fitness for the Parkinson's Foundation of the National Capital Area. She is a Summa Cum Laude graduate of St. Louis University with a Master's in Aging Studies and Gerontology.

She sold her dream car, a 1971 VW Bus, to fund scholarships for care homes starting personalized music programs.

Bernadette is a certified clinical psychologist, private psychotherapist and psychoanalyst. She teaches psychology at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City. She plays piano and comes from a musical family — her grandfather was an orchestra conductor, writer and composer.

She has written and presented on the link between music and psychology: Psychology Foundation of Music, Between Music and Psychoanalysis, and The Power of Music: Intimidation vs Intimacy. Inspired by Alive Inside, she and other professionals founded Córimaz, an organization using music and life stories to improve the lives of elders and build bonds between generations.

Chip directs the Wind Symphony at the Merit School of Music in Chicago and is the founder and president of ARTSpeaks, a non-profit arts advocacy organization. He teaches graduate coursework at VanderCook College of Music and co-directs the Birch Creek Adult Band Camp.

He facilitates the Alive Inside outreach program in Naperville, and serves as an educational clinician for Conn-Selmer.

Ira is an innovation and engagement entrepreneur. He runs the Alive Inside Corporate Social Responsibility program.

Bill is an author, entrepreneur, musician, teacher, farmer and physician whose work explores the terrain of human aging. Best known for his healthcare system innovations, he founded The Eden Alternative, a global non-profit working to improve the care given to older people, and created The Green House, which Provider Magazine called the pinnacle of culture change. He developed the Senior ER model of care and works to transform acute care services for elders.

He wrote Second Wind: Navigating the Passage to a Slower, Deeper, and More Connected Life, and toured nationally to reimagine how Americans approach aging. The Wall Street Journal named him one of the nation's top ten innovators changing the future of retirement, and US News and World Report named him one of America's best leaders.

Robin is the director of The Creative Center at University Settlement. With founders Geraldine Herbert and Adrianne Assail, she helped bring to life the idea that medicine cures the body but art heals the spirit. The Creative Center runs a hospital artists-in-residence program, an arts workshop program, a gallery for professional artists living with illness, and training for artists and administrators.

Since 2006 she has broadened its work across the aging spectrum, from older adults to frail elders living with dementia. In 2011 she initiated a merger with University Settlement, the oldest settlement house in the US. The National Endowment for the Arts selected The Creative Center as a Best Practice Site in 2009, and it is a two-time recipient of LIVESTRONG's Community Impact Project, which has replicated the artist-in-residence program in 22 hospitals across the US.

Samite was born and raised in Uganda, where he is one of East Africa's most acclaimed flutists. He performed throughout the country until 1982, when he was forced to flee to Kenya as a political refugee, and immigrated to the United States in 1987. He has released nine albums internationally and composed film scores.

In 2002 he founded Musicians for World Harmony, which enables musicians to share their music to promote peace and understanding. He travels to sing, play and exchange stories with people affected by war, poverty and HIV/AIDS, working in refugee camps and with former child soldiers and AIDS orphans across Uganda, Kenya, Congo, Rwanda, Tanzania, Latvia, Liberia and Côte d'Ivoire.

Linda, PhD, RN, FAAN, of Stanford University School of Medicine, was the first to develop and test the use of individualised music for the non-pharmacological management of agitation in people with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias. The protocol has been tested and implemented by clinicians in the US, Canada, Great Britain, Sweden, France, Norway, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan. Her evidence-based guideline was first published in 1996 and is now in its fifth edition. She lectures on music and dementia worldwide.