Our Board of Directors
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Joe Monaghan
President
Joe Monaghan is the founder of Paramus, N.J.-based Worldwide Logistics Group (WWL). WWL provides logistics services with 38 offices in 20 countries globally. Joe grew up in a household where jazz music was a staple, giving him a lifelong passion for the music. He is a regular attendee at various international jazz festivals including the Exit Zero Jazz Festival in Cape May, N.J. for which WWL has been a sponsor since 2018 and the title sponsor since 2022. Joe’s passion for jazz and commitment to social equity sparked the idea for The Heart of Jazz Foundation. Joe is a graduate of Fairleigh Dickinson University and did post graduate study at University of New Hampshire.
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Enoch Smith, Jr.
Vice President
Pianist and leader Enoch Smith Jr. plays jazz with a spiritual dimension. Before becoming Director of Music and Worship at the Allentown (N.J.) Presbyterian Church, Smith steeped himself in Music Business and Management along with piano at the prestigious Berklee College of Music. His “Jazz at APC” vespers series has brought new dimensions to worship in Allentown. He has released four jazz CDs all on his own Misfitme label and been reviewed in Downbeat Magazine, Cadence, All About Jazz, and more. Known to friends as E.J., he has often ministered with Contemporary Christian artists Freddy Rodriguez and Ricardo Sanchez in addition to composing scores for three award-winning independent films.
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Jon Auerbach
Vice President
Jonathan Auerbach has been a successful commercial litigator for more than thirty years and is currently the principal of the Resolution Strategy Group. His practice has been national in scope and far-ranging in obtaining substantial relief on behalf of victims of financial fraud, pharmaceutical product defects, radiation health effects, consumer fraud, and violations of civil rights, among other areas. Jon is also a co-founding partner of Norris Square Development LLC, which is focused on redevelopment along Philadelphia’s Front Street corridor. He is also a partner in an institutional angel fund, the Mid-Atlantic Angel Group, that invests in early-stage technology, life science and other high growth companies; and Bowman’s Tower Venture Fund, also with a focus on early-stage life science companies. He served for five years as President of The Racquet Club of Philadelphia, the birthplace of doubles squash and one of the most historic private city clubs in North America. Jon was also a founding trustee of the Cape May Jazz Festival Foundation. He is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Temple University School of Law. His jazz appreciation began as grad student in the 80s, hanging out at the Balcony in Pittsburgh’s Shadyside neighborhood, where he once saw the great Art Blakey performing. Along the way he was mentored by a dirty-sax playing lawyer and a subversive trombonist-cum-newspaperman.
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John Harper
Treasurer
John Harper is Managing Director of Greenbriar Capital, a leading Philly-area developer of sustainable real estate and renewable energy projects. The company provides commercial mortgages and loans for businesses and specializes in Impact and Social Responsible Investment and revitalizing domestic blighted urban areas. John is also on the advisory board for the Obsidian Collection, which aims to be the archive of images for the Black experience and help build generational wealth for the photographers and estates that it works with.
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John Boecker
Secretary
Architect John Boecker went green long before it became more routine. This Yale-trained architect has focused his practice exclusively on green buildings since 1996. He designed two of the world’s first 13 LEED Certified projects, signifying their sustainability. He also is a founding partner of 7group, a PA consulting firm that is focused on socio-ecological sustainability by manifesting regenerative thinking through design and development of the built environment and education. This work understands that each project serves as an instrument for co-evolving the vitality and viability of each community within which it is nested . . . and building capacity for authentic caring. As a keynote speaker and curator, John has facilitated workshops or lectured on the benefits of green buildings, integrative design and regenerative development in 35 states and 14 countries. John co-authored the Integrative Design Guide to Green Building, the seminal textbook for integrative design and construction.
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Reggie Quinery
Reggie Quinerly’s jazz roots in Houston run deep even as he finds himself in high demand on both coasts. His 2012 debut as a leader celebrated the music of the city’s Fourth Ward, once known as Freedmen's Town. Quinerly attended Houston’s High School of the Performing and Visual Arts, a famed jazz incubator, before earning his undergraduate degree at The New School and a master’s at Juilliard in New York City. Now relocated to Los Angeles, this master drummer, composer and leader has also taught music history classes at Hunter College, The Juilliard School and the University of Southern California.
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Orrin Evans
Describing Orrin Evans as a fiercely independent jazz musician is like calling a Philly cheesesteak tasty. Never supported by a major label, Evans has risen to top-tier status, as affirmed by his #1-ranking as “Rising Star Pianist” in the 2018 DownBeat Critics Poll. Grammy nominations for the Smoke Sessions by Evans’ Captain Black Big Band stamped his bona fides as a bandleader and composer. Evans’ projects are multiple and protean, ranging from the Eubanks Evans Experience - a duo with eminent guitarist Kevin Eubanks - and the Brazilian unit Terreno Comum to Evans’ trio with bassist Luques Curtis and drummer Mark Whitfield, Jr., and Tar Baby, a collective trio for 20 years with bassist Eric Revis and drummer Nasheet Waits. Evans and his wife Dawn also run Imani Records, which they founded in 2001 and relaunched in 2018.
https://orrinevansmusic.com/https://orrinevansmusic.com/
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Kindra Parker
Detroit native Kindra Parker earned a B.A. in Public Relations from Wayne State University. Additionally, she studied Music Production and Engineering at Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA. Upon graduation, she worked as a freelance publicist and freelancer marketer in the NYC urban music scene. In 2009 Kindra founded and served as VP and Executive Director of The J Dilla Foundation a 501(c)3 nonprofit whose mission is to help fund and develop inner-city music programs and provide scholarships to students attending schools that have progressive music curricula. In 2011 Kindra moved on to establish Larimar Entertainment, an avant-garde Consulting and Marketing Company specializing in events, social media & entertainment. Kindra has worked in the marketing industry for 20+ years and leads as an innovative business consultant and progressive marketing and events manager. In 2019 she established the nonprofit 501(c)3 MentorHer Ghana a teen mentoring program for Ghanaian girls in rural communities. She also currently serves as the Festival Director for the prestigious Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival.
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Leon Tucker
Honorable Leon W. Tucker is a Senior Judge with the First Judicial District of Pennsylvania. Prior to joining the bench in 2005, he maintained a general private practice since 1979 during which he engaged in municipal finance, contract negotiations, arbitrations, mediations, as well as catastrophic personal injury matters for both plaintiff and defense.
In addition to Heart of Jazz, Judge Tucker is a member of the Board of Directors of The Performance Garage and the Philadelphia Clef Club of Jazz & Performing Arts.
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Karl Stark
Karl Stark is Director of Content Strategy for University of Pennsylvania’s Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, where he focuses on encouraging faculty to write for the public and teaching narrative medicine. Before joining Penn, he worked for more than three decades at the Philadelphia Inquirer, where he served as Health Editor, Business News Editor and National/Foreign Editor. His reporting on the bankrupt Allegheny health system helped lead to indictments of the top three executives. He served as president of the nonprofit Association of Healthcare Journalists, the nation's largest group of health reporters and editors. He also wrote weekly jazz reviews and occasional jazz features for years on such players as Art Blakey, Kenny Garrett, Bill Charlap, Pat Martino, Christian McBride and Joey DeFrancesco.
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John Patitucci
John James Patitucci was born in Brooklyn, New York. When he was 12, he bought his first bass and decided on his career. He cites as influences Oscar Peterson's albums with Ray Brown and Wes Montgomery's with Ron Carter. For the development of rhythm, he points to the time he has spent with Danilo Pérez, a pianist from Panama.
In the late 1970s he studied acoustic bass at San Francisco State University and Long Beach State University. He began his professional career when he moved to Los Angeles in 1980 and made connections with Henry Mancini, Dave Grusin, and Tom Scott. From the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s he was a member of three Chick Corea groups: the Elektric Band, the Akoustic Band, and the quartet. As a leader he formed a trio with Joey Calderazzo and Peter Erskine, and a quartet with Vinnie Colaiuta, Steve Tavaglione, and John Beasley. He has played with Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, and Roy Haynes. Patitucci switches between double bass and electric bass.[3]
He was the artistic director of the Bass Collective, a school for bassists in New York City and is involved with the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz and the Betty Carter Jazz Ahead program. He was Professor of Jazz Studies at City College of New York. In June 2012 he started the Online Jazz Bass School. He was appointed artist in residence at Berklee College of Music.
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Camille Thurman
To call Camille Thurman talented doesn’t quite capture all her facets. As a composer, she’s a two-time winner of the ASCAP Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composers Award. As a vocalist, she was runner up in the Sarah Vaughan International Vocal Competition. And as a tenor saxophonist – who also plays bass clarinet, flute, and piccolo - Thurman spent two seasons with Jazz At Lincoln Center with Wynton Marsalis, becoming the first woman in 30 years to tour and perform full time with the band (2018-2020). During the pandemic, Thurman also led a live-streamed Q&A virtual support talk show dubbed The Haven Hang, for young women and non-binary artists.
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Gail Boyd
Gail Boyd is President of Gail W. Boyd, P.C., an entertainment law firm, and Gail Boyd Artist Management, a wholly owned company of the law firm. She is a graduate of De Paul University and De Paul University School of Law. She was a founding partner in Boyd, Staton and Cave, the first African American female law firm in New York. Gail has been involved in entertainment law since 1976. She has been involved specifically in music with a specialty in jazz since 1979.
Gail presently serves on the Boards of the Pan African Center for Empowerment, the Martin Luther King/Coretta Scott King Memorial, The International Society of Jazz Composers and Arrangers, The Cape May Jazz Festival Foundation, The Heart of Jazz Foundation, The International Society of Jazz Composers and Arrangers, and the North American Performing Arts Managers and Agents (NAPAMA). In October 2019, she was elected President of NAPAMA serving three terms and is now the Immediate Past President. She is the former Vice Chair of the Entertainment, Sports, and Art Law Committee of the National Bar Association. She also chaired the Entertainment, Sports, Art Law Committee of the Metropolitan Black Bar Association and served as a member of the New York State Bar Association’s Committee on Entertainment Law. She served on the Board of WBGO FM Radio in New York as well as the Noel Pointer Foundation. For nearly 20 years, she served as Chair of the Board of Brooklyn Legal Services.
In 2017, Gail formed a Facebook Group entitled “Alternative Venues for Jazz”. Her initial impetus was to provide a virtual space for musicians to share information about performance spaces, particularly outside of the known jazz clubs and festivals. When the pandemic of Covid-19 hit in 2020, Gail converted the page to a virtual meeting space, where musicians and industry professionals come on to the page to share their journey. The page now boasts nearly 10,000 members. As a result, Gail was named by the Jazz Journalists Association as a “Jazz Hero”, was named “A Woman of Influence” by WBGO Radio, and was nominated for the Sidney R. Yates Award for Outstanding Advocacy on behalf of the Performing Arts by the Association of Performing Arts Professionals (APAP).
In 2020, Gail joined promoters Danny Melnick and Brice Rosenbloom and created the Jazz Coalition which funded 104 commissions to jazz artists to compose music inspired by the pandemic and later social and racial justice. She also joined The Blacksmiths which created individual and organizational pledges and resources for artists and arts organizations on topics of racial justice. Gail also co-founded, along with her long-time friend Karen Kennedy, a consulting company entitled Vanguard Arts which serves arts organizations and artists.