Meet the
Board of Directors
and Staff
Don Stinson, Founder/CEO
Don Stinson is a music educator, author, speaker, and clinician. He holds degrees in music education from Joliet Junior College, VanderCook College of Music, Northern Illinois University, and holds an additional Masters in Education Administration from the University of St. Francis.
Don has taught students from different socio-economic areas and from all walks of life. His bands have appeared multiple times at prestigious state and national festivals. He has been an adjudicator and guest clinician for multiple festivals in Illinois and is a National Board Certified Teacher.
He is the host of the music education podcast “The Bandmasters” and the author of High Needs, Monumental Successes: Teaching Music To Low-Income and Underserved Students, available from GIA Publications.
Learn more about Don by visiting www.donstinson.net.
Brian Fruits, Board of Directors
Brian Fruits holds an M.F.A. in Theatre (Stage Directing Focus) from the University of Memphis and originally hails from Chicago, Illinois. He also has a B.A. in Secondary Education from Concordia University of Chicago in River Forest. Brian has directed several educational, community, regional, and professional productions throughout the land. He even served as Assistant Director to 2010 Chicago Director of the Year, Rachel Rockwell, for Chicago Shakespeare Company’s world premiere of The Adventures of Pinocchio. While he was in graduate school, he received the prestigious 2012 Meritorious Teaching Award, given to one graduate student teacher a year, and the 2013 Creative Excellence Award, given to one student in the Fine Arts Department. He was the Ostrander Award Winner for Best Director at the University of Memphis for Wit and received a full scholarship for one year to study masks and physical Theatre in Europe with Donato Satori and Paola Coletto. He has also taught and created drama classes for adults with special needs and disabilities at the L'Arche Community Center and West Suburban Special Recreation Association and served as an intern with the StillPoint Theatre Collective in Chicago. There, he worked with incarcerated, severe and profound, and the homeless individuals creating art. In 2014, he worked for B.B. King and helped mount the current show Beale Street Heat on a few of the major Holland America Cruise line ships. Brian is a proud member of the Illinois Theatre Association (ITA) and an associate member of the Stage Director & Choreographers Union (SDC). In 2021, he was selected to attend the Directors Lab in Toronto on a full scholarship. Brian also serves as the Alumni Board President of Hephzibah Children’s Association in Oak Park, Illinois and is a 2018 inductee into Leyden High Schools Alumni Wall of Fame for his service to the community in the names of the arts and education. He is currently a full-time member of the Joliet Junior College Theatre Program. Check out his 501c3 theatre company, Saltbox Theatre Collective, that is housed in Edgewater.
Learn more at www.saltboxtheatre.org
Karen Lega, Board of Directors
Wesley Russell, Board of Directors
Jermaine Stegall, Board of Directors
Jermaine Stegall is an accomplished and versatile composer and conductor. With over 50 projects to his credit, Stegall most recently completed the score for “Coming 2 America”, the highly anticipated sequel to the Eddie Murphy classic, with Murphy, Arsenio Hall and James Earl-Jones all reprising their roles. Stegall’s recent scoring and conducting assignments have included “Senior Year” (2022) for Paramount Pictures, and the upcoming film “Oracle” for Universal Pictures. He has also had the opportunity to collaborate over the years with notable film composers including Danny Elfman, Christophe Beck, William Ross, Marco Beltrami, Harry Gregson-Williams, Christopher Lennertz, and Blake Neely, and Mark Isham.
As a musical conductor, Stegall led a live string orchestra alongside Grammy-winning artist Tori Kelly at the televised 2019 ESPY Awards. A year prior, he conducted the orchestra to Camila Cabello’s performance of “Consequences” on ABC’s American Music Awards.
Learn more about Jermaine at www.jermainestegall.com.