Staff

Executive Director

CHAD COOPER

Chad joined the Conservatory’s Board of Trustees in July of 2014 and served as its Treasurer before joining the staff as Executive Director in August of 2016. Prior to joining the Conservatory, Chad was a Managing Director in the Real Estate Investment Banking Group at Deutsche Bank Securities where he worked for over 15 years covering public and private real estate companies, investment managers and private equity platforms.

Earlier in his career, Chad worked for four years at the St. Louis Development Corporation, the economic development agency of the City of St. Louis, Missouri. There, he designed and implemented community and economic development programs targeted towards alleviating poverty in some of the most economically distressed neighborhoods in St. Louis and East St. Louis. During his time in St. Louis, Chad also co-founded a project-based grassroots non-profit organization called Metropolis Saint Louis, which sought to foster greater engagement of young people in city revitalization efforts.

Like many Staff and Board members of the Conservatory, Chad was drawn to the organization by a love of music. It is a thread that connects many joyful and formative experiences in his life, from nervously singing in school plays before his 5th grade classmates; to performing timeless jazz standards in college with the Yale Whiffenpoofs; to the joy he experiences today seeing how music makes his two sons – both piano students at the Conservatory – instantly happy. Chad is a piano student at the Conservatory himself, having started piano lessons when he joined the Staff, and still not sounding very good.

Chad recently was elected to the Board of Trustees of the National Guild of Community Arts Education, a membership-based organization whose mission it is to develop leaders, strengthen organizations, and advocate for community arts education around the country. The Conservatory is one of the 400+ proud members of the Guild, and we wholeheartedly share the Guild’s vision of a nation where arts education is accessible and embraced as essential for human development and healthy communities.

Chad earned his MBA from Stanford and his BA from Yale.

Director of Administration 

MICHAELA MECHLOVITZ

Michal Mechlovitz joined the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music team in 2012. She has worn many hats at BKCM over the years from Gala Coordinator, to Human Resources Manager, to Instrument Explorers Teaching Assistant, and is excited to apply her years of experience and love for BKCM and its mission to her new position as Director of Administration.

Michal is a born and bred Brooklynite. She has always loved her lively home borough for its diversity of culture and counts herself lucky to live in a city where she can hear music from different traditions and practices from around the world on any given night. She’s proud of BKCM’s work to extend opportunities in music education and therapy to the spitfire and tenacious people of her home city regardless of age, level, ability, and limitation. She loves being part of a team that believes music is for everyone.

Michal is a classically trained mezzo soprano, holding a degree in voice performance from the Boston Conservatory. She has a strong affinity for 20th century and contemporary music, particularly the French repertoire and the work that came out the context of the World War period. What she’s always loved most about classical singing is the crossing of master music and poetry at iconoclast historical checkpoints. She loves absorbing languages and the written word, and has collaborated on writing projects with fellow musicians and music projects with performance artists. She has a taste for art with attitude that’s rebellious, provocative, and challenges form and the status quo.

When Michal is not humming through the halls of BKCM, you can find her throwing clay or at the beach.

DIRECTOR OF FINANCE

SHAMEEZA CHANDARPAL

FINANCE ASSISTANT

ALISA BRUZA

Director of Marketing & Development

ROSE CRICHTON

Rose Crichton-White is a New York Emmy-winning professional with over 15 years of cross-sector integrated marketing, event management, and community relations experience.  Most recently, she served as Director of Marketing & Communications and Interim Director of Development for Spence-Chapin Services to Families and Children, a nonprofit organization focused on domestic and international adoption.

Previously, Rose was Associate Director of Partnerships & Marketing for BRIC Arts & Media in Brooklyn where she managed the BRIC Media Share program.  There, she partnered with other nonprofit organizations to help them produce mission-based short-form video content and incorporate it as part of their own long-term marketing strategies. As part of that program, she received two New York Emmy nominations and won her first New York Emmy in 2018.

Rose also worked with media company, Emmis Communications as Director of Marketing & Promotions for radio station 98.7 KISS-FM and as an integral  marketing and community relations team member of the global Hip-Hop brand, HOT 97.  As a freelance consultant and event manager, she worked with companies such as MTV, the Brooklyn Hip Hop Festival, Mission One Voice, New York Comic Con, NBC and Interscope Records.

Rose is a City University of New York Alumna and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Media and Film Studies from Hunter College and a Master of Science degree in Marketing from Baruch College. She is a Brooklyn native and currently lives with her husband, son, and cat in Ditmas Park.

MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER

MARTIN PORTER

Martin Porter is a pianist, curator and strategy manager with a lot of hometowns. Born in Amsterdam and moving through Cleveland, Toronto, and Ft Lauderdale before settling in Brooklyn in 2011. A jazz pianist since he was 7 coming up in Cleveland, Martin has been fortunate to work and play(very briefly) with many great musicians over the years, including Clark Terry, Wynton Marsalis, and Tootie Heath. An avid music historian, he enjoys spending hours (and too much money) at record stores, reading books on history, and spending as much time as possible with musicians in the New York jazz scene, experiencing history as it happens.

Martin began his management career at New York Consulting Partners under the mentorship of Elizabeth Edersheim. After project managing and launching the business theory app “ThEME”, he left to tie music into his professional life more completely, becoming Programming and Operations Manager for Rabbit Moon Productions, and was responsible for curating and managing performances at world-class jazz club Jazz Standard (Operated by Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group), along with other productions and curation for events such as the Oval Lawn summer music series at Madison Square Park with the Madison Square Park Conservancy, and the Montclair Jazz Festival.

After receiving his MBA, Martin came to BKCM as Marketing and Communications Manager, in an effort to make a lasting impact and to spread the gift of music as widely and completely as possible. He is responsible for all materials and copy for the Conservatory’s external and internal communications, and helps out with event production and curation when called upon. He loves tying all of the great programming that BKCM does together and helping people find music that they love.

Martin received his BMus in Jazz Piano Performance from the University of Toronto, and his MBA from Purdue University Global.

If you want to waste an hour or two of your time, just say the words “Charles Mingus or “Thelonious Monk” around him.

MARKETING ASSOCIATE

ERIN GALLAGHER

FINANCE & SPECIAL PROJECTS MANAGER

MIRANDA KNUTSON

Miranda Knutson joined the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music in the winter of 2014 helping organize BKCM’s Red Hot Winter Gala. She has worn many hats at the Conservatory including co-running the Brooklyn Brass Festival, implementing early childhood programming at Head Start schools, setting up new summer camps, organizing staffing, food, auctions and other day-of logistics for 11 galas and numerous events. She currently works on events, special projects, payroll, budgets and outreach billing. She coordinates with program directors to set billing and payroll rates for over 64 sites for Music Partners and Music Therapy.  She tracks each programs schedule, budget, grant allocation, account receivable and payroll changes to reconcile and give updates and analytics to Finance and Development.

Miranda has been part of the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music community since she was 8 years old. Over the years she has taken piano, voice, musical theater, saxophone, flute, and chorus at BKCM. She has performed with the Village Light Opera Group, Vertical Players, and other local opera groups.

Prior to BKCM, Miranda was Program and Development Coordinator for Community Works, where she coordinated community learning arts workshops in public schools as well as wrote grants and ran events for historical/arts exhibitions. Before that, she worked at the Museum of Sex as the Special Events Coordinator, and at the Metropolitan Playhouse as Company Manager.

Along with her love of music, she has pursued other passions. Miranda is a Historical Cloth-making instructor, Stage Combat choreographer, and Licensed New York City tour guide. Miranda received her B.S. in History at MIT, and her Masters in Medieval History at Kings College London. On weekends you can generally find her with her spinning wheel teaching at colonial houses around New York, or leading tours of literary and historic pubs of Greenwich Village and Brooklyn Heights.

Development Associate

CARA SEARCH

Operations Associate

JUVENAL SANTIAGO

HEAD REGISTRAR

FATIMA JIHADA

REGISTRAR & OPERATIONS SPECIALIST

DOUGLAS BRADFORD

Registrar & Operations Specialist

ALEX SELAWSKY

Registrar & Operations Specialist

BRYAN CABRERA PEREZ

Graphic Designer

JEFF YAS

Jeff Yas is an experienced graphic artist, singer, songwriter & guitarist. At BKCM, he serves as Senior Designer, creating and maintaining a cohesive brand identity across all marketing & communications. Jeff’s style mixes the geometric minimalism of Art Deco & Bauhaus with strong color palettes and engaging typography. His own Park Slope studio is called YAS (www.yasgraphics.com) and specializes in logos, websites and brand marketing. His band Turnpike (www.turnpike718.com) plays original alt-folk Americana with a Jazz & Southern Gothic feel, and has just released their first EP “Leaving Camptown” on iTunes and Spotify. They play regularly at Rockwood Music Hall, Freddy’s, Three’s Brewing, The Way Station & Branded Saloon.

Junior Graphic Designer

RACHEL PARK