Meet the board
Elizabeth Limons Shea
Board Member
Caldwell
Velnambi
Board Member
Reviewed as “a remarkable contemporary dance display,” Elizabeth Shea’s choreography has been produced by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and presented at numerous festivals and major cities nationally and internationally. Liz has been a guest artist for many professional companies and universities and creates extensively in new media and film. Awards include Best Choreography for the Lens, Best Dance Film, and Best Ensemble. Liz teaches her self-developed somatic system, SomaLab®, yogic practices, and choreographic methods at workshops in the USA and abroad, most recently at the Royal Academy of Dance in London, and Dance Italia, in Lucca, Italy. A 200-hour E-RYT, Liz is Professor and Director of Contemporary Dance at Indiana University.
Nicholas Batley
Board Member
I am an aging Yorkshireman, a recovering Catholic, a physician, a father and a grateful husband. My life’s journey has been supremely average yet spectacularly different. I have lived on a tiny South Pacific island, where I wore a skirt to work and never sat in a car. I spent fifteen years in Lebanon and dealt with war, bombs, learned Arabic and something about an alien culture. I came to the US with $200 in my pocket and, because of manyadvantages, found material success. My greatest success, however, results from the inevitable ups and downs that made me grow into the peaceful, contented man I am today.
Caldwell Velnambi has spent his entire career immersed in the IT industry, particularly enterprise resource planning, for over 30+ years, and is founder of ERP Logic, LLC. He began his career as a management consultant, implementing SAP ERP for several Fortune 500 companies with expertise in the areas of Sales and Distribution, Logistics Execution, Production Planning, Finance and Controlling, Material Management, and cross applications.
He served as president of the federation of Tamil sangams of North Amerca (FETNA).
Graham Parker
Board Member
Graham Parker recently concluded his tenure as President of Decca Records, US at Universal Music Group. In this role, Parker oversaw the largest classical music media company in the US, dominating market share and Billboard charts weekly. Decca Records, US is the home for artists such as Andrea Bocelli, Idina Menzel, Lang Lang, Max Richter, Olafur Arnads, Chad Lawson and more. Decca Records, US encompasses the US-based labels Decca Gold, established by Parker, and Paragon. It also is the proud partner of European sister labels Decca Records, Decca Classics, Deutsche Grammophon, ECM, and Mercury KX. Parker was the longest tenured classical label president in the history of UMG USA.
Prior to joining Universal, Parker was General Manager of WQXR and The Jerome L. Greene Performance Space and a Senior Vice President of New York Public Radio. During the six years in that role, Parker earned a Peabody Award and implemented ambitious initiatives to serve New York's thriving classical music scene. During Parker's tenure, WQXR launched a new national series, Carnegie Hall Live; pioneered critically acclaimed festivals including Beethoven Awareness Month, Month of Mozart, and Bachstock; presented a broad range of live events; oversaw the highly successful WQXR Instrument Drive; and secured WQXR's role as a leading digital music source with WQXR's relaunched app, the growth of Q2Music (a channel dedicated to contemporary classical music), and the launch of Operavore, WQXR's 24/7 opera channel. Prior to WQXR, Parker was Executive Director of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. In his eight years with Orpheus, Parker played a critical role in securing the long term future for this world-class orchestra.
Parker started his career in positions with the New York Philharmonic, The Chamber Music Society of the Lincoln Center and the Brooklyn Philharmonic.
Parker holds a BSc (Hons) from Oxford Brookes University. He started his musical training on flute and piano, eventually taking up conducting when he arrived at college. He conducted the Oxford Brookes Choir and Orchestra and also was the music director of Oxford Brookes’ only production at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1992.