Kimberly Glick is on the road as an audio engineer and tour manager, when global pandemics allow. She started in the field 15 years ago and is now one of the 5 percent of professional audio engineers who identify as female.

Glick has toured with social change advocates Rhiannon Giddens, Ani DiFranco, Buffy Sainte-Marie, and The Devil Makes Three. She started her own company, and has created a thriving network of women on the road who support and champion each other.

Jamie Katz Court (pronouns: she/her/hers) moved to North Carolina in 2004 from Portage, Michigan. She earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism, but once she discovered her passion for working in the arts, she never looked back.

Court has worked for PineCone -The Piedmont Council of Traditional Music, a Raleigh, N.C.-based roots music organization, for more than a decade. In her education, outreach, and community engagement work she has focused on diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility to make PineCone’s programs welcoming to all and reflective of the community.

Leyla McCalla finds inspiration from her past and present, whether it is her Haitian heritage, living in New Orleans, dancing at Cajun Mardi Gras, or growing up on the streets in Brooklyn. As a bi-lingual multi-instrumentalist, cellist and singer, she has risen to produce a distinctive sound that reflects the union of her roots and experience.

Deeply influenced by traditional Creole, Cajun, and Haitian music, as well as by American jazz and folk, McCalla’s music is at once earthy, elegant, soulful, and witty—it vibrates with three centuries of history, yet also feels strikingly fresh, distinctive and contemporary.

Singer, songwriter, bass player, and Grammy nominee Missy Raines was the first woman to win IBMA’s Bass Player of the Year award in 1998, and has gone on to win this honor eight times, more than any other bass player in the history of the organization.

Raines started her career playing for bluegrass legend Eddie Adcock. She then joined The Brother Boys from Johnson City, and worked with Ed Snodderly, who became an important influence on Raines’ musical approach and writing. Soon after, she joined Claire Lynch and The Front Porch String Band, touring with the group off and on before pursuing her solo career in 2009.

Lisa Schwartz is the Festival and Programming Director for the Philadelphia Folk Festival (PFF), and works to create extraordinary musical experiences for audiences and artists.

Presented by the nonprofit arts organization Philadelphia Folksong Society, PFF is the oldest continuously run music festival in North America. It was the first U.S. festival to take the Keychange Pledge for gender parity both on and behind the stage.

Schwartz is on the board of Folk Alliance International, and uses her strategic marketing and branding skills to consult with artists around the globe.

Fiddler Annie Staninec has toured with David Grisman, Darol Anger, and numerous other national groups. She has been a full-time member of Kathy Kallick’s band since 2008. Annie teaches at some of the most prestigious music camps in the world, and has received numerous awards including the IBMA Momentum Award for Instrumentalist of the Year in 2015 and the Whippoorwill Arts Award in 2020.

In addition to bluegrass and swing, Staninec plays Cajun and zydeco, which she performs frequently, as well as traditional Irish and old-time music. She has also toured with well-known folk and pop artists, including Mary Gauthier, and The Rod Stewart Band.

Trisha Tubbs has been the producer of the annual International Bluegrass Music Association’s (IBMA) Momentum Awards in Raleigh, N.C., for more than five years. She is a member of the core team that has produced the annual IBMA Industry and Distinguished Achievement Awards for the past four years, and serves on the advisory council for the IBMA Foundation’s Arnold Shultz Fund.

Tubbs is also on the board of Acoustic Sound (producers of the award-winning Wintergrass Music Festival); hosts and organizes the annual Wintergrass Music Educators’ Meeting and Reception; and writes a column for the Washington Bluegrass Association’s Bluegrass Gazette.

Laurelyn Dossett is a singer-songwriter living in the piedmont of North Carolina. Her songs reflect the stories of the region, both traditional and contemporary.

She cofounded the popular regional folk-bluegrass band Polecat Creek with singing partner Kari Sickenberger and is a frequent performer at music festivals. In recent years, Dossett has partnered with Triad Stage’s Preston Lane on plays featuring regional folklore and original music. Her song “Anna Lee,” was featured on Levon Helm’s Grammy-winning record, Dirt Farmer, and is included in the documentary film about his life.

Dossett also hosted the 10-part video series that is part of the A Place in the Band project.

Claire’s love of bluegrass music began at a New Grass Revival concert at ‘Green Acres Music Hall’, an off-the-beaten-path venue in the foothills of North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains near her hometown of Hickory, NC. It was a life changing experience. Soon after, Claire started working part-time in Artist Relations at renowned roots music festival MerleFest before earning the title of Artistic Director (2000-2007). After relocating to Nashville in 2007, Claire started working at KCA Artists as artist manager for Sierra Hull and Guy Clark. In 2014, she started Planning Stages, Inc., where she is a live music production consultant, talent buyer and producer. Planning Stages’ client list includes Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival, Oak Hill, NY; The Earl Scruggs Music Festival, Tryon, NC; The Franklin Theatre, Franklin, TN; The Dixie Performing Arts Center, Huntingdon, TN; Guitar Mash, New York, NY; International Entertainment Buyers Association (IEBA), Nashville, TN; Pujols Family Foundation, Nashville, TN; Borealis Records, Toronto, Ontario; and The Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame & Museum, Owensboro, KY.