Meet our Board

Founder and Executive Director at Mentor For Change (MFC) in Los Angeles.  MFC was conceived and launched to share and grow the hope of a better tomorrow for every youth. While he leads MFC as his passion project, Steven also works as a Staff Analyst at the L.A. County Department of Health Services and Co-Chair of the Faith Collaborative to End Homelessness.

Mr. Robert Salzberg began studying music at the age of 6 when his parents enrolled him in group piano lessons. He always enjoyed playing the piano, but it wasn’t until he started learning the viola in fifth grade where he fell in love with music. He continued his love through high school where his orchestra teacher pushed him to pursue music education. Robert went to James Madison University with a partial music scholarship and studied viola under professor Amadi Azikiwe. He graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in Music Education.

Robert Salzberg first began his teaching career in 2014 in Prince William County Public Schools. He worked in PWCS for four years teaching a wide variety of students. He worked in low-income areas where he connected with students through making music fun and accessible for all students of all cultures. He also started the strings program at the school for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, where he collaborated with the teachers and interpreters to help those students become successful in strings class.

In 2018, Robert moved to teach in Fairfax County Public Schools where he was placed at Navy Elementary and Poplar Tree Elementary. He has enjoyed his time at both schools and watched as his programs grew to becomes some of the largest elementary strings programs in the county. Robert’s core teaching beliefs revolve around making learning an instrument a fun and accessible experience for all students. Robert Salzberg maintains a private studio where he teaches violin and viola lessons to students of all ages. He also graduated summa cum laude with his master’s in educational leadership from George Mason University in 2021. In his spare time Robert enjoys relaxing with some video games, a good book, or hanging out with his cat.

Sabrina Plassman is the COO of Program and Partnerships of the New Teacher Center. New Teacher Center (NTC) is a national non-profit organization with a belief that every student from preschool through high school deserves an excellent and equitable education that empowers them to reach their full potential in classrooms, communities, and beyond. Their mission is to disrupt the predictability of educational inequities for systemically underserved students by accelerating educator effectiveness. Plassman has over 17 years of experience. She began her career in 2005.

Before joining NTC, Plassman was a partner at TNTP and before that, a partnership manager at Insight Education Group. Earlier in her career she was a teacher with Teach for America. Plassman graduated from Northwestern University – Kellogg School of Management with an MBA in management, organization, and social entrepreneurship, from Stanford University with an MA in policy, organization, and leadership studies, and from Boston College with an undergraduate degree in economics and English.

Melissa Ryan is an experienced lawyer and business executive with a passion for organizations that focus on providing opportunities to school-aged kids. Melissa has a diverse professional background that includes positions in a variety of industries including marketing, law and real estate. Melissa received a B.A. in Speech-Communications from the University of Minnesota and a J.D. from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. She is a past board member of the Public Education and Business Coalition in Denver, Colorado. Melissa has two daughters who love to play music and ski.

Emma-Grace Kim, violinist, is a sophomore at Oakton High School. Emma-Grace has won numerous competitions, including Virginia MTNA Competition, NVMTA Achievement Awards, AAMS Competition, and NVMTA Concerto Competition among others. She gave her first solo performance with an orchestra at nine years old. Since then, she has performed solos and recitals at venues such as the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage, Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, and the National Gallery of Art. Last year, Emma-Grace was featured at WETA Classical’s Annual Salon Series at the House of Sweden, and also performed at the Embassy of the Republic of Korea commemorating the 70th Anniversary of the US-ROK Alliance. In 2022, she participated in NPR From the Top’s Learning and Media Lab Fellowship, which culminated in a recording of Six Duos by Robert Schumann, arranged by Alfredo d’Ambrosio, for radio premier, with concert pianist Peter Dugan and Grammy-award winner Charles Yang. 

Emma-Grace has been a member of the American Youth Philharmonic Orchestra (AYPO) for the last seven years, and is currently concertmaster of American Youth Philharmonic (AYP). This past summer, Emma-Grace attended Boston University’s Tanglewood Institute where she took on the role as concertmaster of the Young Artists Orchestra, and was invited to perform in a masterclass with Boston Symphony Orchestra concertmaster Nathan Cole. Most recently, she was selected as a Kennedy Center National Symphony Orchestra Youth Fellow and is a private student of Jing Qiao, first violinist of the NSO.

Emma-Grace volunteers her time with children in underserved communities through ITZArt4you, a non-profit organization she and her sister founded in 2021. She is also involved in her school club, ITZArt4Oakton, where she organizes music performances at Oakton High School, providing fellow high school musicians a place to share music with the Cat B community. 

Ella Kim, 16 years old, is from Herndon, Virginia, and attends Oakton High School. She currently studies piano with Professor HieYon Choi and Yang Gao at Peabody Conservatory. Ella started playing the piano when she was four years old. Ever since, she has won numerous awards including first prize alternate at the 2022 Virginia MTNA Competition, first prize at the Charleston International Music Competition, and the Carmel Klavier International Piano Competition.More recently, Ella won second prize at the 2024 David Dubois International Piano Competition and the AAMS International Music Competition. 

In 2019, Ella appeared on NPR’s From the Top Show as part of an eight-hand ensemble and was invited back to be featured as a soloist, and to perform in their Facebook live concert series. In 2023, Ella performed for WETA Classical’s Annual Leadership Circle event at the Embassy of Sweden in Washington, DC, and was invited to perform at the Embassy of the Republic of Korea commemorating the 70th Anniversary of the U.S.-Korea Alliance. Ella has performed at the Millennium Stage at the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, the Embassy of Austria, Embassy of Hungary, the National Institute of Health, and the US State Department.

Over the summer, Ella participated in the Boston University Tanglewood Institute Young Artist Piano Program, where she engaged in a unique collaboration with dancers from the New York Theatre Ballet, merging music and movement. She also performed in a masterclass led by the acclaimed concert pianist Conrad Tao. Subsequently, Ella traveled to San Francisco for Bay PianoFest, where she played in a masterclass with renowned pianist Alvin Chow.

Fueled by her passion for connecting with others through music, Ella and her sister co-founded a non-profit called ITZArt4you, which enables teen musicians to harness their musical talents by providing free, weekly music lessons to children in their community. 

Outside of music, Ella serves as a student representative to the Fairfax County School Board Student Advisory Council and is the founder of ITZArt4Oakton, a club that provides a space for fellow teen musicians to share music with the Oakton community. Ella enjoys reading, K-pop, traveling and trying new foods, and is a black belt in Taekwondo.