Our Advisors

M. De Voe is a Manhattan-based fiction writer who has won awards and published short fiction in nearly every genre. She holds an MFA from Columbia University where she was a Writing Fellow and where she studied under Michael Cunningham, Helen Schulman, Joyce Johnson, and thesis advisor Matthew Sharpe. She won a fellowship to the 2008 St. Petersburg Summer Literary Seminars. The manuscript of her Columbia thesis won an honorable mention.

In 2013, De Voe founded Pen Parentis, a literary nonprofit organization that provides resources to authors who are also parents. The organization hosts an annual Writing Fellowship for New Parents and runs a popular reading series in Manhattan called the Pen Parentis Literary Salons, which is curated by Christina Chiu.

A member of both Equity and SAG/AFTRA, under the name Milda DeVoe, she appeared in many plays in New York City, including The Marriage of Bette and Boo, A Lie of the Mind, Baby with the Bathwater and The Heidi Chronicles (as the title role). She still does voiceover work in both Lithuanian and English, and is one of the Lithuanian voices of OnStar.

Scott was named President and CEO of the Music Academy in 2010 after serving as Vice President for Institutional Advancement. He served in that role through August 15, 2023.

As the Academy’s President and CEO, Scott Reed forged a number of transformative initiatives including partnerships with the New York Philharmonic and London Symphony Orchestra, the Mosher Guest Artist Program, an annual four-week String Quartet Seminar led by the Takács Quartet, a solo piano competition presented in collaboration with Steinway & Sons, Community Access programs cultivating new audiences, the Alumni Enterprise Awards, the Classical Music Evolution/Revolution Conference, and a Commissions and Premieres program.

Prior to his tenure at the Music Academy, Scott worked for the San Francisco Opera as Associate Director of Development and as a consultant for St. Luke’s Hospital Foundation.

Scott currently operates Lane 4 Fundraising with business partner, Jonathan Bishop, spearheading major fundraising drives throughout Santa Barbara County. 

Scott Reed earned his bachelor's degree in Vocal Performance at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Linda’s work has focused primarily on Child Advocacy, advocating for and establishing Music & Arts Education programs, and strengthening communities. She has served as president on many hard-working boards including The Children & Families Action Network (Alameda County, CA), Solvang School Education Foundation (“SAM”), Valley Community Theatre, Santa Barbara Strings, and The Santa Ynez Valley Foundation. She currently serves as the series coordinator for the Santa Ynez Valley Concert Series, working to present a plethora of internationally recognized classical musicians in the Santa Ynez Valley. In 2017, she was honored as Woman of the Year by the Santa Maria Times and Santa Ynez Valley News as an advocate for youth education and the performing arts. 

Linda has a Masters in Law & Social Policy and a Masters in Social Services from Bryn Mawr Graduate School of Social Work & Social Research. 

Trip Hawkins is an American entrepreneur best known as a founder and early visionary of the video game industry. He studied Strategy and Applied Game Theory at Harvard University and earned an MBA from Stanford University. Hawkins began his career at Apple Computer, where he served as Director of Marketing and became convinced that software—particularly interactive entertainment—would play a major cultural role.

In 1982, he founded Electronic Arts (EA) with the goal of treating game developers as creative artists. Under his leadership, EA became one of the most influential companies in gaming, helping to define modern game publishing. Hawkins also launched the EA Sports brand and was instrumental in the creation of John Madden Football, one of the most successful franchises in video game history.

Hawkins later founded The 3DO Company, which developed the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer console, and Digital Chocolate, a mobile game studio. Throughout his career, he has championed innovation at the intersection of technology, creativity, and play, and is widely regarded as a pioneering figure in the global video game industry.