Board of Directors

Anna R. Lee

Founder, Opera Singers Initiative / ArtsTrak

Chairman of the Board of Directors

Anna R. Lee is the Founder of Opera Singers Initiative, a nonprofit organization that provides business training, artist development, and mentoring for emerging professional opera singers. She is responsible for the management, oversight, and strategy for Opera Singers Initiative. Each year, Opera Singers Initiative selects outstanding emerging professional opera singers to join the program, designed to help singers transition from academia to the ‘real world’ by building practical business skills.

Mrs. Lee helped conceive and build a number of successful products, programs, and platforms for Opera Singers Initiative including developing and hosting Young Opera for PBS – an online web series about young opera singers in New York; building OSI’s mentoring program for young singers, arts and business professionals; and conceiving and marketing a new online educational platform (ArtsTrak) to provide practical expert-driven business and career content for the arts.

Mrs. Lee advised and mentored senior executives of nonprofit organizations on fundraising, programmatic development, and organizational change through The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Mrs. Lee successfully worked with nonprofit organizations to build and implement critical turnaround fundraising plans and strategies which allowed these organizations to continue operations, increase revenue generation, and build capacity.

At McKinsey & Company, Mrs. Lee oversaw over 80 national and international consultants while running the business operations of McKinsey Alumni Consulting (MAC) working closely with McKinsey shareholders and partners in the development, launch, and coordination of McKinsey Alumni Consulting. MAC became the firm’s first new program in over 40 years, and Mrs. Lee managed the finances, program growth, alumni consultants, and revenue generation within this program.

Anna R. Lee was born in Grants Pass, Oregon and raised in New Mexico; her parents are co-founders of Agape, a nonprofit organization that provides shelter, food, and clothing for the homeless. Mrs. Lee launched her career in the arts at the age of fourteen starring in numerous musical theatre, opera, and theatre productions including Anton in Show Business, A My Name is Alice, Hansel and Gretel, Brigadoon, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 5. Mrs. Lee was on the faculty of the Steinhardt School of Education, Culture and Human Development as an Adjunct Professor at New York University and a finalist for the prestigious Global Arts Fellowship which honors outstanding artists nationally and internationally. Mrs. Lee was the sole opera singer selected as a finalist for this fellowship.

Mrs. Lee has been featured in Crain’s Gotham Gigs, WNYC STAR Initiative, Harvard Business School’s Community Partner’s Program, and was a Crimson Scholar. Recently, Mrs. Lee founded ArtsTrak - a new online educational platform to provide critical business, career, and arts education in partnership with Opera Singers Initiative.

Upcoming, Mrs. Lee will be a featured panelist and speaker at the Harvard Social Enterprise Conference discussing innovative business models in the arts.

Mrs. Lee can be reached at anna@operasingersinitiative.org.

William R. Lee III

Associate Director, Cushman & Wakefield

President, Board of Directors

Bill Lee is an Associate Director at Cushman & Wakefield. Mr. Lee is recognized as an entrenched, prolific, and accessible component of the commercial real estate landscape and well known by many in the industry. Highly respected by his peers, Mr. Lee specializes in providing first-hand insight for tenants he represents, while also focusing on point of service trust for acquisition, disposition and emerging industry specific companies.

Prior to joining Cushman and Wakefield, Mr. Lee worked at Newmark Knight Frank, with such significant assignments as the marketing and disposition of approximately 242,000 RSF of office space in Manhattan with a proposed buildable availability of 500,000 RSF.  Additionally, sourcing and assembling an RFP response for The Loews Corporation's Building Agency of 150,000 RSF in Tennessee, and separately for Dallas. On the tenant side of transactions, Mr. Lee was instrumental in sourcing C.V. Starr & Co.'s national RFP in corporate services and lease administration, The Associated Press’ National RFP for Lease Administration and Transaction Services,  Intuit in Project Management and General Corporate Services, and The United Way in New York City disposition and acquisition RFP.

Mr. Lee began his corporate real estate activity at Insignia/ESG in Manhattan and was leasing account executive at CB Richard Ellis where he sourced the Misys International Banking Systems account and was a member of the internal disposition and acquisition team who executed a combined acquisition of 53,000 RSF in Downtown, Midtown and New Jersey in repositioning. Also during that time, Mr. Lee represented J.P Morgan in  a number of deals including a 45,000-square-foot sublease at 120 Broadway Downtown where he has worked for 2 years. Additionally,  he has acted as tenant representative for Or Music, LLC in their move from the GM Building to 37 West 17th Street. He has coordinated multiple brokers in a subleasing disposition at 15 Exchange Place in Jersey City for NASDAQ.

Mr. Lee's goals for servicing his clients revolve around generating superior ideas, advising his clients on best practices, drawing deep market insights, leveraging landlord and tenant relationships, and simplifying standard Manhattan protocol.

Mr. Lee can be reached at bill.lee@cushwake.com. 

Angela Maria Blasi

Vice President/Artist Manager, Columbia Artists Management (CAMI Vocal)

Board of Directors

Angela Maria Blasi is one of today's leading lyric sopranos and performs regularly with international opera houses and festivals of the world including Munich, Vienna, London, Milan, Brussels, Florence, Hamburg, Berlin, and the Metropolitan Opera.

After winning numerous voice competitions including the Metropolitan Opera Competition in 1981, the New York born Italian-American soprano became a contracted member of the Hessen State Theater in Wiesbaden. In 1985, Wolfgang Sawallisch offered her a contract at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, where she soon became an audience favorite in leading roles such as Susanna (Marriage of Figaro), Pamina (Die Zauberfloete), Nedda (Pagliacci), Mimi (La Boheme), Liu (Turandot), and Micaela (Carmen). Angela's successes in Munich were highlighted by her 1994 appointment by the Bavarian Ministry of Culture as Kammersaengerin as well as the 2000 Munich Merkur Prize for her interpretation of Marguerite in Gounod's "Faust".

Angela is also well known as a recording artist, and received a 2004 Grammy nomination (Best Vocal Performance) for her interpretation of orchestral songs by Joseph Marx. Other important recordings include collaborations with Nikolaus Harnoncourt in works of Bach and Mozart, Sir Colin Davis in the Mozart Requiem and Brahms Requiem, and Giuseppe Sinopoli in the symphonies of Mahler.

Film credits feature her in the Salzburg production of Mozart's "Il Re Pastore" with Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, as Musetta in the Luigi Comencini "La Boheme" with Jose Carreras as Rodolfo and James Conlon conducting, and as a soprano soloist in many commercially released gala concerts with the Munich Opera orchestra under the baton of Zubin Mehta.

Highlights of the past two seasons include her critically acclaimed performance of Puccini's heroine in Robert Wilson's "Madama Butterfly" with the Los Angeles Opera, her performance of Mathilde in the 2005 Opera Orchestra of New York's Carnegie Hall presentation of Rossini's "Guillaume Tell", and her South American debut as Mimi in "La Boheme" at the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires.

Angela has just relocated from Munich, Germany to the United States and makes her home in Harrington Park, New Jersey.This coming season will feature Angela's debuts at the New York City Opera, Ft. Worth Opera, West Palm Beach, Grand Rapids, as well as a reengagement at the Teatro Colon in Argentina.