Carey Fay Horowitz, Founding/Executive Director, is a graduate of New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, where she earned a B.A. in writing and community activism while playing drums for a variety of underground bands. Throughout high school and college, she spent summers working with children of all ages at the Berkeley Tuolumne Family Camp, where she developed an understanding of the power of camp to create community. After volunteering at the Portland, Oregon Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls in 2006, she headed back to her original hometown of Oakland to start a Bay Area version of the camp, which debuted in July 2008 at the Julia Morgan School For Girls. She plays in the all-female band Songs For Moms, gives private drum lessons, and works in downtown Oakland at Girls Rock Headquarters as the camp's Founding Director.

Melissa P. Coats, Technical Director, is a graduate of the UCLA School of Arts and Architecture with a B.A. in Art and Asian American Studies. She developed and led creative enrichment programming for at-risk youth through the Making Waves program in San Rafael and she has worked with students of all ages while teaching English in South Korea. Before co-founding the Bay Area Girls Rock Camp, she volunteered with various non-profit community organizations in the Bay Area. She has been a musician her whole life-- piano at age 6, flute at 9, violin at 10, electric guitar and bass at 12, banjo at 17, mandolin at 20, zithers at 22, drums and singing at 25, unusual synthesizers at 26, and now spends time permuting sounds through numerous effects pedals in her two bands. Her musical passions meteorically collided with her ideals of empowering youth with the advent of Rock Camp. Her background in art and print publications helps her create rock camp media and documents, while her proclivity for instruments, computers and mechanics helps keep BAGRC organized and functioning smoothly. She is rock camp's enthusiastic Technical Director.

Anna Luisa Petrisko, Development Coordinator, studied Journalism and Women’s Studies at UCLA and took up drums and guitar when she was twenty. As an empowered but inexperienced female musician in Los Angeles, she started to feel alienated and frustrated by sexism in the music scene. Naturally, she started making music and art as a response. Her film “86 The Chicks” is a satirical look into the politics of gender and music and is still featured in the coursework of UCLA women’s studies and media production classes today. Anna Luisa has published articles about women in music for FEM, The Parisian, Barcelona Weekly and Asia Pacific Arts. She is a founding member of feminist bands Pistil Reform, Eggs on Leggs, and currently plays in Schwule. At Rock Camp, she wears many hats as the Development and Outreach coordinator. She leads the workshop on Image and Identity, is a primary grantwriter, and has recently spearheaded an outreach campaign to involve more underserved girls at camp.

Corinne Cavallaro has been interested in music, performing and the arts since the ripe age of 2. She grew up on stage singing, dancing, acting and dabbling in a variety of musical instruments. Corinne earned an animation degree from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and holds her dream job in production at Pixar Animation Studios. In addition, she sings in the rock band TKO and was so inspired by the mission of the Bay Area Girls Rock Camp she wanted to be a part of it.

Melissa Pak Coats (See Staff Bios)

Melissa Connelly, Secretary, is a BAGRC camper parent. Melissa’s daughter gained so much from the camp that Melissa volunteered to participate as a board member to help the camp grow and thrive. Melissa has a background that includes 10 years of child welfare direct service as a social worker and supervisor. She currently works for UC Berkeley at the California Social Work Education Center planning and revising curricula for training child welfare social workers in California.

Marvis Hackett-Walker currently is a Senior Executive Associate at an industry leading financial investment firm. Ms. Hackett-Walker has an extensive background in marketing, stage and video production and administrative management. Ms. Hackett-Walker resides in the east bay, is married and has three children.

Laurie Halliday grew up in the Gap, Inc. corporation – growing from being an assistant in marketing to becoming a Vice President of Marketing for the Old Navy division. During her 13 years with the company, her love of mentoring became her passion. After having two children 16 months apart, she decided that her newfound interest in child development along with her love of mentoring were good qualities for becoming a school counselor. She went back to school to get her Master’s degree in School Counseling and Marriage & Family Therapy. She has spent the last three years as a credentialed middle school counselor. In her role as a school counselor she has had the opportunity to create and facilitate groups promoting positive body image in pre-teen girls. Her interest and training in fostering self-esteem in girls made becoming a member of the Bay Area Girls Rock Camp Board of Directors a natural fit. Laurie lives in Oakland and mentors her two children through their various musical endeavors, including piano, violin, chorus, drums and bass guitar. Her daughter has now participated in two summers of BAGRC, and Laurie was a vocalist in the first-ever Ladies Rock Camp supporting BAGRC.

Carey Fay-Horowitz, Treasurer (See Staff Bios)

Dana Jae's career as an audio engineer spans 23 years from the first day she began to wreak havoc on her Tascam PortaStudio in the early 80's. Jumping away from the stage where she fronted and sang lead for her own bands and into the "behind-the-scenes" tech realm, she began a career as sound engineer in 1987. She toured extensively throughout the U.S. and Europe as front-of-house audio engineer for a number of bands on various record labels in the early 90's. She has maintained a live sound production company since 1989 called DCJ Productions (now Venture Productions) that has provided sound services to the Bay Area in both large outdoor sound events as well as nightclubs and music halls. In 1995, she stepped up to Digidesign's.Pro Tools and has been recording exclusively digital ever since combining stints in sound for film as a location sound engineer as well as in post-production audio and continues to record music. In 2001, Dana was hired as part-time faculty at City College of San Francisco in the Broadcast
Electronic Media Arts Department where she teaches basic audio production, sound for video, sound reinforcement and pod/vodcasting. She also currently teaches at Laney College. She is a member of Women's Audio Mission, Bay Area Women in Film and Television, the Audio Engineering Society, and serves on the Board of Directors for Bay Area Girls Rock Camp!

Sarah K Mehlfeld, President, was born and raised in Oakland, CA. She began her life as a musician at the age of 9 playing piano, moved on to the electric guitar at age 14, and currently plays these instruments and others in bands in the Bay Area. She graduated from The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA in 2004 with a B.A. in Liberal Arts and Psychology. While living in Washington, Sarah immersed herself in the thriving women's music scene, and worked at the Olympia YMCA as a mentor and youth leader for the "Late Night Teen" program. In 2005, she discovered the Rock 'n' Roll Camp for Girls in Portland, Oregon and volunteered there that summer, as well as the following three summers. She was featured in the documentary film about the Portland camp called “Girls Rock! The Movie," and has since gone on to co-found the Bay Area Girls Rock Camp.

Nicole Neditch is an independant curator, graphic designer and arts administrator. She has been a consultant for many emerging and professional artists and organizations, designing and implementing marketing plans, and pointing artists in the right direction to launch their careers. In January of 2003, Nicole opened the Mama Buzz Cafe and Gallery. During the five years that she owned the cafe, she exhibited over 150 bay area based artists, giving a large number of artists their first solo exhibition opportunity. She was also involved with founding Oakland's First Friday Gallery Walk: ArtMurmur, a grassroots organization comprised of gallery owners, working together to gain more visibility for the arts and artists in Oakland. In January 2005, former Oakland Mayor, Jerry Brown appointed Nicole to the Oakland Cultural Affairs Commission where she is now serving as Vice-Chair. She lives with her husband, and rockin' daughters Charlie and Piper, in Richmond.

Esther Pearl, Vice President, has spent the last 10 years working in Production Management in the Entertainment Industry. Most recently she worked at Pixar Animation Studios and managed the Art and Story Department on several feature films including The Incredibles and Wall-e. Along with her time at Pixar she has been campaign worker on numerous democratic campaigns and for the past four years she has been a fundraiser for the Alzheimer’s Association. She is passionate about social sustainability and using the media as an educational tool. Esther currently is pursuing an MBA in Sustainable Management at The Presidio School of Management. She lives in San Francisco with her family and can't wait for her daughter to go to Girls Rock Camp.

Anna Luisa Petrisko (See Staff Bios)

Natalie Danielle-Ruiz Tofano (See Staff Bios)