202.633.7933, LinnM@si.edu

Mary S. Linn is curator of cultural and linguistic revitalization at the Center. Her primary research is in effective grassroots strategies in language and cultural sustainability, especially in small language communities. She directs the Language Vitality Initiative, including the Sustaining Minoritized Languages of Europe (SMiLE) research project, and serves on the curatorial committee of the Smithsonian’s Mother Tongue Film Festival and the steering committee of the National Breath of Life Institute. She co-founded the Sino-Tibetan Language Research Methodology Workshop (2016–present) and teaches at the Institute on Collaborative Language Research (CoLang). Before coming to the Smithsonian, she initiated the Oklahoma Native American Youth Language Fair and was the founding curator of the Native American Languages Collection at the University of Oklahoma’s Sam Noble Museum. She holds a BA in American studies from Wichita State University and an MA and PhD in linguistics from the University of Kansas.

202.633.6455, LoughranME@si.edu

Maureen Loughran joined Smithsonian Folkways Recordings as director and curator in 2023. A public ethnomusicologist by training, she was the senior producer for the nationally broadcast public radio program American Routes in New Orleans, where she wrote and edited segments on vernacular American music. She served as deputy director of the Center for Traditional Music and Dance in New York, where she oversaw grants, managed artist relations, and produced public programs. Loughran’s experience includes work in archives, both internationally at the Irish Traditional Music Archive in Dublin, Ireland, and nationally at the Archive of Folk Culture at the Library of Congress. As a researcher, Loughran documented the sacred and secular music traditions of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for the Louisiana Folklife Program, while her doctoral research explored underground radio, soundscape gentrification, and cultural community organizing in her hometown of Washington, D.C. Loughran holds a PhD in ethnomusicology from Brown University.

202.633.0641, LynchA@si.edu

Asia Lynch joined the Center as management support specialist in 2023, after five years as a management support assistant at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Her career in the federal government began in 2012 at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; as a correspondent control specialist, she prepared correspondence for the director and nine regional offices.

202.633.6515, MellizoJ@si.edu

Jennifer M. Mellizo joined Smithsonian Folkways in 2020 as a part-time education contractor and was hired as education specialist in 2024. Previously she was a K–8 general music, band, and choir teacher at the University of Wyoming Laboratory School in Laramie for twenty-two years. She holds a PhD in curriculum and instruction and an MA and BA in music education, all from the University of Wyoming. She was a Wyoming Arch Coal Teacher of the Year in 2014, the Albany County School District No. 1 Teacher of the Year in 2016, and a U.S. Fulbright scholar to Spain in 2021. Jennifer is a member of the Journal of General Music Education editorial board, publishes research and practical articles in a variety of peer-reviewed journals, and frequently presents her work at regional, national, and international conferences. Her book Re-Imagining Curricula in Global Times: A Music Education Perspective was published in 2023.

202.633.6454, Monseur@si.edu

Mary Monseur joined the Center in 1993. Together with her colleagues at Smithsonian Folkways, she has worked with scholars and artists worldwide to produce more than three hundred recordings. She received a BA in cultural anthropology from the University of Arizona and an MA in English with a folklore concentration from George Mason University.

202.633.2013, MorganC@si.edu

Claire Morgan is a donor relations specialist, ensuring donors experience high-quality interactions with the Center to foster long-term engagement and investment. Before joining the Center in 2025, she was a program officer at a foundation, where she developed colloquia on culture and the arts, and a program director focusing on social change at a university-based research center. At the Smithsonian, she has stewarded thousands of members and donors through Friends of the Smithsonian. She holds a PhD in political theory from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a MA in decorative arts and design history from George Washington University.

202.633.0653, MotleyS@si.edu

Sabrina Lynn Motley joined the Center in 2013 as director of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Previously, she was senior director of programs and exhibitions at Asia Society Texas Center, overseeing content-rich public programs and exhibitions highlighting Houston’s expanding connections with Asia. Before the Texas Center, Sabrina was vice president of Vesper Society, a social justice foundation, and program and education director at the Japanese American National Museum (a Smithsonian affiliate). She curated public programs for the Getty Museum and community-based exhibitions for the California Endowment. Sabrina taught anthropology at Art Center College of Design and Otis Institute for Art and Design. She also hosted The Global Village on KPFK in Los Angeles. Sabrina earned a BA in world arts and cultures and an MA in African studies, both from UCLA. Currently she is a doctoral candidate in anthropology, conducting research on the interplay between religious faith, doubt, and social activism.

202.633.1141, MurphyCR@si.edu

Clifford Murphy was named director of the Center in April 2023. He previously served as the director of Folk & Traditional Arts and as the point person for tribal consultation at the National Endowment for the Arts (2015–2023) and as the director of Maryland Traditions, the state folklife program of the Maryland State Arts Council (2008-2015). He has co-produced public radio features about Maryland folklife and published books and articles on American vernacular music, public folklore, and applied ethnomusicology. Raised on the New Hampshire seacoast, he holds a BA in history and English from Gettysburg College and an MA and PhD in ethnomusicology from Brown University. A songwriter, Americana musician, and home coffee roaster, Cliff lives in Maryland with his wife and their four rambunctious kids.

202.633.6452, NainiS@si.edu

Sahara Naini joined the Smithsonian Folkways staff in August 2021 after interning with the royalties team. She studied ethnomusicology and law, societies, and justice at the University of Washington in Seattle, where she performed with internationally recognized musicians in various genres from around the world. In her free time, she enjoys teaching piano and discovering new local bands at small venues.

202.633.0658, NelsonTL@si.edu

Tyler Nelson began working on the Folklife Festival technical crew in 2009, serving as exhibit worker, master carpenter, and shop foreman over the following four years. He returned in 2015 as technical director after two years in Lititz, Pennsylvania, working for the Tait Towers touring staging company. Born and raised in Middle Tennessee, he graduated from Western Kentucky University in 2010 with a BFA in technical theatre.

202.633.6463, OttoTC@si.edu

Ted Otto joined Smithsonian Folkways in 2023 and is responsible for royalties management and contract and copyright administration. He previously served as a royalties contractor and web and IT intern with Folkways. He holds a BA in history and Spanish from the University of Georgia.

202.633.7931, PetersonC@si.edu

Cecilia Peterson is the digital projects archivist in the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections. Her work focuses on making collections more accessible to diverse audiences through digitization, description, and online resources. She manages photographic documentation at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, collaborates with the audiovisual archivist to process born-digital fieldwork and cultural sustainability projects, and oversees rights and reproductions of the collections. She also serves on the editorial board for Folklife Magazine and co-produces the FORKLIFE web series. She holds a BA in English from St. Mary’s College of Maryland and a master’s in library science from University of Maryland, College Park.

202.633.6438, PlaceJ1@si.edu

Jeff Place has been at the Center’s Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections since 1988. He holds an MLS from the University of Maryland and specializes in sound archives. He oversees the cataloging of the Center’'s collections and has been involved in the compilation of more than sixty CDs of American music for Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, including the Lead Belly Legacy series, the Pete Seeger American Favorite Ballads series, The Asch Recordings (Woody Guthrie), Jazz Fest, and Playing for the Man at the Door: Field Recordings from the Collection of Mack McCormick, 1958–1971. Place has won three GRAMMY Awards (out of ten nominations) and six Indie Awards (out of twelve nominations). He was one of the producers and writers of the acclaimed 1997 edition of the Anthology of American Folk Music and The Best of Broadside, 1962–1988 (2000). He has served on the curatorial team for a number of exhibitions, including the traveling Woody Guthrie exhibition This Land Is Your Land. In 2003, he co-curated the Smithsonian Folklife Festival program on Appalachian culture. He produced and authored the publication and CD box set Woody at 100 (with Robert Santelli) in 2012, Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Collection in 2014, and the GRAMMY-winning Pete Seeger: The Smithsonian Collection in 2019..

202.633.6443, ReinigerA@si.edu

Arlene Reiniger has been with the Center since 1982, when she worked with the participant staff for the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. As program specialist, some of the projects she has coordinated have included the Smithsonian Folkways Recordings benefit album A Vision Shared: A Tribute to Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly, a lecture series on contemporary South African society, and a multimedia education kit on Iowa folklife. As a Festival program coordinator, Arlene has worked on many music, state, regional, national, international, and thematic programs. In 2012, she curated the Festival program Creativity and Crisis: Unfolding the AIDS Memorial Quilt. As intern coordinator, she has overseen the internships of hundreds of people with the Center, many of whom have continued work in the field. Arlene received her BA in anthropology from George Washington University in 1979.

ShanahanL@si.edu

Laura Shanahan joined Smithsonian Folkways in 2020. As a member of the communications team, she has contributed to campaigns for over fifty new releases and reissues. She loves diving into the Folkways catalog, researching archival materials, and bringing lesser-known stories from the vast collection to life across various online spaces. Previously, Laura held marketing roles at the North Carolina Museum of Art and the Cat’s Cradle, a music venue in Carrboro, North Carolina. She holds a BA in media and journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she specialized in advertising/public relations with a minor in music. In her free time, she enjoys pottery, film photography, watching documentaries, and attending local concerts.

202.633.6458, SmithJM@si.edu

John Smith brings nearly three decades of music industry experience and over eighteen years of service at the Smithsonian. In his first tour of duty from 1999 to 2014, he served countless roles in the organization, including head of the sales department, international distribution manager, and manager of operations for the Sales & Mail Order division. Over the years, John produced and compiled numerous albums released on Smithsonian Folkways Recordings and has worked under all three directors of the organization since Folkways Records was acquired by Smithsonian in 1987. Outside of his time at Smithsonian Folkways, Smith applied his skills at numerous record labels and radio stations, in addition to co-founding Free Dirt Records in 2006, home to internationally known artists and multiple GRAMMY-nominated albums.

202.633.6516, SuarezA2@si.edu

Armando Suárez is the archivist of Latina/o history and culture in the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, a position federally funded by the Latino Initiatives Pool, administered by the National Museum of the American Latino. His work focuses on processing collections to foreground and increase accessibility of Latina/o, Afro-Latina/o, and Mestiza/o archival documentation in the Rinzler Archives. He holds a BA in anthropology/sociology from Florida International University and master’s degrees in art history and information and library science from the University of Florida and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, respectively.

202.633.0663, WalkerDM@si.edu

Dave Walker joined the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections in 2014 as an audio preservation specialist after moving from Nashville, Tennessee. He holds a BS in audio engineering technology and BA in art history from Belmont University and an MA in museum studies from the George Washington University. His primary focus is the preservation, conservation, and digitization of historic audiovisual media such as open-reel tapes and instantaneous discs. He has also performed audio mastering on commercially released albums and independent films.

202.633.0212, WilligerJ@si.edu

Jonathan Williger joined the Smithsonian Folkways team in November 2018 to expand the label’s digital communications initiatives and reimagine how fans discover its music. He previously worked in New York and Los Angeles as a senior music publicist at Motormouthmedia, where he led campaigns for a diverse array of artists and music festivals. In Chicago, he worked at the pioneering independent label Thrill Jockey Records. He has been a regular DJ on WNYU and WFMU, and his writing on music has been published by Pitchfork, Noisey, Bandcamp, Resident Advisor, and Tiny Mix Tapes.

202.633.6517, ZimmermanBr@si.edu

Brian Zimmerman joined Smithsonian Folkways in September 2015. He holds a BS in business marketing from Virginia Commonwealth University and has spent several years working in various facets of the music industry, including independent radio, music marketing and PR, and venue management.

Rich@si.edu

Richard Kennedy was deputy director of the Center from 1994 to 2008 and served as acting director until April 2009. He co-curated Smithsonian Folklife Festival programs Hawai'i, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Russian Music, Tibetan Culture, Silk Road, Oman, and the Mekong River and coordinated larger institutional efforts such the Smithsonian’s 150th Birthday Party. Previously he was assistant director of the National Council for the Traditional Arts. His film on Cambodian refugees won Best Documentary at the San Francisco Film Festival. For twelve years he was chair of South Asian Area Studies at the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Service Institute. Kennedy earned a PhD in South and Southeast Asian studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and was given an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Connecticut College. He has taught courses at the UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz and has been on the boards of several nonprofit organizations.

Diana Parker was director of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival from 1985 until 2010. She had worked on the Festival since 1975, prior to which she worked in various public program positions at the Smithsonian and the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History. She served as a consultant on several Cultural Olympiads and an array of public events, including the Smithsonian 150th Birthday Party, the Los Angeles Festival, and every public presidential inaugural celebration since Carter’s in 1976. She served as producer for the World War II Reunion on the Mall and The First Americans Festival celebrating the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian. She worked closely with sponsors, public officials, and educational, cultural, and arts organizations in numerous states and over forty nations. Diana graduated with distinction from George Washington University and received a Rotary Fellowship to study anthropology at the University of Cape Town in South Africa.

ASeeger@ucla.edu

Anthony Seeger is an anthropologist, ethnomusicologist, archivist, and musician. He received his BA from Harvard University and his MA and PhD in anthropology from the University of Chicago. His research has concentrated on the music of Amazonian Indians in Brazil, where he lived for nearly ten years. In 1982, he returned to the United States as associate professor of anthropology and director of the Indiana University Archives of Traditional Music. In 1988, he moved to the Smithsonian to assume the direction of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings and to become the curator of the archival collections of the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. In 2000, he accepted a position as professor in the department of ethnomusicology at the UCLA. Anthony is the author of four books and over fifty articles on anthropological, ethnomusicological, archival, intellectual property, and Indian rights issues.

SeitelP@si.edu

Peter Seitel joined the Center’s staff in 1978 and served as senior folklorist, webmaster, acting director, and director. Prior to service at the Smithsonian, Peter was an assistant professor of anthropology at Princeton University. He earned his PhD in folklore and folklife at the University of Pennsylvania, writing a dissertation based on eighteen months of fieldwork in northwestern Tanzania on the conversational use of proverbs and logical structures in metaphor. He has written on metaphor, narrative, and the concept of genre as a method in interpreting oral literature. He was project co-coordinator for the UNESCO/Smithsonian World Conference on the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage.

SheehyD@si.edu

Daniel Sheehy joined the Smithsonian in 2000 after serving as director of Folk & Traditional Arts at the National Endowment for the Arts (1992–2000) and staff ethnomusicologist and assistant director (1978–1992). A Fulbright-Hays scholar in Veracruz, Mexico, he earned his PhD in ethnomusicology from UCLA. The American Folklore Society honored him with the Américo Paredes award in 2010, recognizing a career of excellence in integrating scholarship and engagement with the people and communities one studies, and the Benjamin A. Botkin prize in 1997, recognizing major impact on the field of public folklore. In 2015, he received the Bess Lomax Hawes National Heritage Fellowship award from the National Endowment for the Arts.