Eli “Dr. E” Yamin
Managing and Artistic Director
Founding Board President
Eli “Dr. E” Yamin is the co-founder, Managing and Artistic Director of Jazz Power Initiative, growing the 20 year-old organization from a fledgling startup to a thriving community-based arts provider offering high quality youth music education at low or no cost to families, community concerts, and artist and teacher training to hundreds of students and thousands of audience members annually.
An internationally presented pianist, composer, producer, author, arts advocate and educator, Dr. Yamin is the 2024 recipient of the prestigious American Academy of Teachers of Singing AATS Award in recognition of his leadership and excellence in youth jazz education. Yamin has trained over a thousand teachers and artists in Jazz Power Pedagogy, a unique combination of creative, experiential and reflective teaching tools drawing from the African American cultural roots of jazz and cultivated in collaboration with many renowned artists over the past 20 years. As a Steinway artist and band leader, Dr. E has performed at Jazzmobile, Lincoln Center, and Carnegie Hall in New York, and The White House and National Geographic in Washington D.C. As a passionate advocate for jazz he has appeared on ABC TV, WABC, Bronxnet, Sirius XM, and WBGO Radio.
As a cultural ambassador touring on behalf of the United States Department of State, Dr. E has performed at concert halls and festivals across Western Europe and the United States and in Albania, Brazil, Chile, China, Guatemala, Greece, India, Mali, Montenegro, Romania and Russia. His recordings include You Can’t Buy Swing with his jazz quartet; I Feel So Glad, with his blues band; Louie’s Dream, dedicated to “our jazz heroes,” with New Orleans-based clarinetist Evan Christopher, and Live in Burghausen with tenor saxophonist and jazz icon, Illinois Jacquet.
Eli Yamin co-wrote with Clifford Carlson five jazz musicals for young people, three of which are published and have been performed internationally in four languages and across the United States: Message From Saturn, a space odyssey where three young people discover the healing power of the blues and how to sing, play and dance it to save the world; Nora’s Ark, about overcoming social dogma to unite to solve environmental crisis and Holding the Torch For Liberty, the first musical published about the fight for women’s suffrage. Yamin was the founding director of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Middle School Jazz Academy, leading its first decade, starting with 13 students in Manhattan and expanding the program to serve over 75 students in three boroughs; in addition, his instructional videos for Jazz at Lincoln Center’s online Jazz Academy have received nearly two million views.
Dr. Yamin is the author of several articles, including Jazz Culture and Swing Rhythm for Chamber Music America Magazine and a book, So You Want to Sing the Blues: A Guide For Performers, published in 2018 by Rowman and Littlefield in collaboration with the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS). He holds a Doctorate in Musical Arts (D.M.A.) from Stony Brook University, State University of New York, a Master’s Degree in Music Education from Lehman College, City University of New York; a Bachelor’s in Music from Rutgers University, and is a level three certified teacher of Somatic Voicework™ and the Lovetri Method. He has taught piano, improvisation, composition and jazz history at Lehman College, Stony Brook University, and Marymount Manhattan College.
Inspired as a teen by African-American theatre artists at the Crossroads Theatre in New Brunswick, New Jersey and mentored by writer/activists Amiri and Amina Baraka, Eli Yamin landed his first national tour as the musical director for the 10th Anniversary tour of Duke Ellington’s Sophisticated Ladies, directed by Mercedes Ellington, Duke Ellington’s granddaughter. Working with Ellington sparked what has become a driving force in his professional work as a composer and educator: the marriage of jazz and theatre. Yamin has continued collaborating with Ms. Ellington for 30 years and in 2024 served as her musical director for her 125th Birthday Salute to her grandfather, Duke Ellington, at Symphony Space, NYC.
Early work with drummer Walter Perkins Trio, saxophonist Illinois Jacquet Big Band and philosopher Dr. Maxine Greene at Lincoln Center Institute for the Arts in Education provided Yamin with a unique combination of tools for spreading jazz across generations. He studied voice with Jeanette LoVetri and Darrell Lauer, composition and orchestration with John Corigliano; piano with John Kamitsuka and Eleanor Hancock; and jazz with Jaki Byard, Fred Hersch, Kenny Barron, Keith Copeland, and Dr. Barry Harris, with whom he enjoyed a thirty-year association. He is a proud resident of 28 years in uptown New York City, the community he serves through Jazz Power Initiative.
Dr. Wendy Rothman
Board President, Organizational Psychologist, Business Entrepreneur, Author, President of Psychology at Work
Wendy Rothman, business entrepreneur and organizational psychologist, is a renowned and sought after professional with a focus on developing human capital. With a background that combines successful entrepreneurship with advanced training in psychology, she brings unique breadth and perspective to the work of performance management. Combining measurement rigor with real world business success, Wendy is a practical and inspiring advisor to executives at all levels. Her academic training combines a PhD in Psychometrics (the scientific discipline of testing and measuring human characteristics) with a Masters in Organizational Behavior. While completing her post graduate studies, she went on to build and grow 4 businesses in the discipline of managing and developing Human Capital – the largest of which grew to over $110 million in revenues. This experience grounded her academic training with real world understanding of the issues and choices facing executives in general and executive women in particular. Since 2001 she has been the President of Wenroth Consulting, Psychology at Work – a consortium of business psychologists specializing in leadership development, executive assessment & performance coaching as well as career transition counseling. Today, Wendy is an elected member of The Committee of 200, an organization for preeminent women Presidents and CEOs. She is a published author, speaker, broadcaster, and recognized expert in maximizing human behavior at work.