Dr. Marschnee Strong, Executive Director, is a pianist, educator, and arts leader who cultivates relationships within her community. Throughout her career, she has served on numerous arts organization boards. Her recent work includes marketing, fundraising and development with the Artist Presentation Society, and she serves as Vice President and Chair of Music in Schools and Colleges with Missouri Federation of Music Clubs. Through these, and similar, organizations she coordinates numerous music galas, festivals, and competitions.
Additionally, Marschnee ardently works to build support systems for young and aspiring artists by offering them the skill set, knowledge, network, and opportunities to build thriving careers. After relocating from the Chicago area, she opened an independent music studio in St. Louis, Missouri which offers individual lessons, creative and educational workshops, and performance opportunities for young artists. She subsequently founded St Louis Music & Performing Arts Club, which connects musicians and students with scholarships and awards through one of the nation’s largest non-profit music organizations. Her career passions led to doctoral studies at Vanderbilt University in Leadership and Learning in Organizations, where she received her Doctor of Education in May 2024.
Scout Fynn, Marketing and Community Engagement Coordinator, is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, and cultural practitioner. Her work takes on many forms often informed in response to current themes and her own curiosity.
She explores intersections between the written word, new media, and performance to create cultural experiences that reflect the social landscape, promote artistic impact, and interrogate the complexities of human experience.
Scout is a graduate of The Market Theatre Laboratory and during her studies, performed in two Naledi Award-winning productions, “No Easter Sunday For Queers” directed by Mwenya Kabwe, and her first-year class production of “Eclipsed” directed by Sylvaine Strike. Since then she has curated for arts festivals such as Time Of The Writer and The Artfluence Human Rights Festival at the Centre For Creative Arts and most recently for The Voices of Women Museum, a virtual exhibition that explored the physical presence of memory through the collected narratives of marginalized South African women.
In 2022 she was selected as a finalist for the Distell National Playwright Competition for her dystopian satire “GLITCH” and her written work has appeared in several festivals such as the National Arts Festival virtual fringe, POPART Joburgs 24 Hours In The City theatre festival and had her most recent work, a visual essay, published on the IQOQO reference platform, in response to her participation in The French Institute of South Africa’s Re-Imagining Heritage, Archives and Museums convening as one of the programs selected mentees.
Tom Clowes, Artistic Director, founded Crossing Borders Music in 2011. As Executive and Co-Executive Director from 2015 to 2025, he oversaw the its dynamic and sustained growth from a volunteer-run start-up to a professionally-managed arts, culture, and education organization with a diverse range of community-led programming.
Through fundraising and grant-writing efforts, he’s also supported the financial development of small non-profits primarily serving BIPOC communities including Building Leaders Using Music Education – Haiti, Refugee Women for Peace and Justice, the Chinese Fine Arts Society, and his local church. For nearly 15 years, Tom taught at Garfield Park’s treasured Chicago West Community Music Center, and remains invested in its community. Since 2000, Tom has been teaching youth at Haitian summer music camps. Requests from Haitians for better media representation following Haiti’s devastating 2010 earthquake led to the creation of Crossing Borders Music.
Jessica T Carter, Young Composers Project Teacher/Mentor, is a composer, violinist, mezzo-soprano, voice coach, and educator from Indiana described as “evocative” and “lyrical” by Aspire Magazine and Apricity Magazine, respectively. Specializing in concert music, film scoring, and musical theatre, Jessica’s aim and goal as a composer is to exude the message of hope and freedom to all but specifically to marginalized children. In 2020, she was the winner of the Indiana University South Bend Symphonic Composition Competition. In the same year, Jessica was published for her ground-breaking research entitled “Concert Music of the Civil Rights Movement: Uncovering the Erasure of Black American Composers in the United States.” She has been commissioned by organizations including Crossing Borders Music, Castle Of Our Skins, and the South Bend Symphony Orchestra. Jessica received a Master’s of Music in Composition under the tutelage of Dr. Jorge Muniz at Indiana University-South Bend. Jessica has also worked as a public-school music teacher. Learn more at www.jtcartermusic.com.