Board of Directors

Anna R. Lee

Founder & Executive Director, Opera Singers Initiative

Chief Executive Officer, ArtsTrak

Anna R. Lee is the Founder and Executive Director 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 or at (212) 542-8758.

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. 

Dr. Claudia Friedlander

Professor, Classical Voice & Education

Board of Directors

Claudia is a voice teacher with a busy private studio in New York City. She has more than 15 years of experience teaching singing technique to professionals and amateurs who perform everything from opera to Persian classical music to death metal. She earned her BA in Music at Bennington College, MM degrees in both Voice and Clarinet Performance at Peabody Conservatory, and a DMus in Vocal Performance and Pedagogy at McGill University.

Ms. Friedlander writes on the popular blog The Liberated Voice about vocal technique.

Elizabeth Kim

Vice President, Corporate Tax, Deutsche Bank

Board of Directors

Elizabeth Kim is a Vice President in Corporate Tax at Deutsche Bank specializing in international taxation and tax risk management.  Elizabeth recently returned to New York from Deutsche Bank’s Frankfurt and London offices.  Previously, she was an analyst at Xmark Asset Management covering the biotechnology space and has experience in healthcare marketing.  Ms. Kim holds an MBA from Saïd Business School of University of Oxford, Master’s degree in Environmental Sciences from Columbia University, and Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Boston University. 

Outside of professional interests, she is a theater-enthusiast, cineaste, and avid marathon-runner.  Ms. Kim lives in Manhattan and has been a supporter of the Metropolitan Opera since 1997.

Madeleine Cag

Counsel, Gregory P. Joseph Law Offices

Board of Directors

Madeleine Cag is a Counsel at Gregory P. Joseph Law Offices.  She is based in New York and has ten years of experience advising sophisticated corporate clients on complex commercial legal matters. She has worked with boards and management of major public and private corporations in some of their most complex and important business-legal issues. Ms. Cag is an attorney who enjoys stepping out of the office and working with people at all levels of an organization in solving legal challenges in accordance with commercial needs. 

Ms. Cag is a leader of long-term initiatives for legal reform most recently as Co-Chair of the Middle East Committee of the American Bar Association International Section; she is a Founder and Advisory Board Member of the New York County Lawyers Association Mentoring Program for legal professionals; and she is a member of the Leadership Team for IMPOWR, a fully searchable, wiki-like Research Database, organized by country with original content and robust links on forty subject areas, structured around the principles of the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Ms. Cag is well-versed in cutting-edge legal and professionalism issues, has an entrepreneurial streak and an enthusiastic interest in the arts. 

Ms. Cag holds a juris doctorate degree from Rutgers University, a masters degree in Political Science/Global Governance and a bachelor of fine arts from Washington University in St. Louis.