Harvey Mogenson grew up in Wisconsin and attended the University of Wisconsin—Madison for an Accounting/Finance degree. After graduation, he joined the staff of Ernst & Young, where he would work for twenty years, including ten as an International Tax Parner. After transferring from Milwaukee to New York in 1982, Mogenson met National Sawdust Founder and Chair Kevin Dolan. Mogenson has worked across continents, from Brussels to Washington DC and now New York,  and institutions, including Ernst & Young and Morgan Stanley. Mogenson was Managing Director and Global Head of Tax at Morgan Stanley until his retirement in 2015. When Dolan embarked on the creation of National Sawdust — the Original Music Workshop at the time — Mogenson vowed to support his friend however he could. Mogenson may not have a formal musical background, but he enjoys a good performance and admires Dolan’s vision and passion.

Jill Steinberg is a photographer who captures the many incarnations of live performance from opera to theater to dance to jazz to orchestral and chamber music to film. She thrives on getting candid shots of deep expression and flow that few have access to.  She has photographed indoors and outside, during daylight, at dusk and at midnight. Her work has taken her across the globe, from National Sawdust, the home for musicians in Brooklyn she helped found, to The Kennedy Center, The Park Avenue Armory, the Barbican Centre, Teatro Manzoni in Milan, The Monte Carlo Opera House, the Banff Theatre in Canada, and Disney Hall in LA. She has worked with Beth Morrison Projects, Heartbeat Opera, Sister Sylvester, and the terraNOVA Collective among other smaller organizations, and has been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time Out New York, Time Out Amsterdam, BOMB, and on NASA’s website. 

Jill is the Board President of National Sawdust, a nonprofit venue whose mission is rooted in music discovery that is open, inclusive, and based in active mentorship of emerging artists, while building new audiences and communities of music devotees.  Jill is a member and official photographer of the Up Until Now Collective that develops and produces new interdisciplinary work that explores empathy, intimacy, and community.  Jill is the Board chair of VisionIntoArt, an interdisciplinary company founded by Paola Prestini, whose mission is to create, produce, and curate visionary art and music projects which expand the frontiers of culture.  Jill is a champion of, and photographer for Sister Sylvester, a performance and filmmaker who works with new technologies to make cross-species collaborations, essay films and lecture performances. Jill is a Professional Company Member of OPERA America, and a former member of OPERA America’s Board of Directors.   She is also a former Board member of Heartbeat Opera, whose mission is to create incisive adaptations and revelatory arrangements of classics, reimagining them for the here and now.  She and her husband, William Steinberg, are founding donors to the National Opera Center.   In these various capacities, Jill is a champion of both artists and their art.

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Kevin Dolan founded National Sawdust, then known as Original Music Workshop, in 2010. His commitment to National Sawdust continues a lifetime of engagement with music and musical institutions.  As Rick D’Avino, National Sawdust Vice-President, has often remarked, Kevin is “the Andrew Carnegie for emerging artists … but without the deep pockets”  Kevin believes that music is part of a person’s DNA and, for some, it’s “almost a salvation.”  His bedrock principle in founding National Sawdust is “to help the musician and composer community, particularly the younger folks. If you support them, you support the art form.”

After taking piano lessons as a child, Kevin began the study of the classical organ at around age 14 and continued his study during college and graduate school years while pursuing non-music academics.  Kevin has served as the organist at a variety of churches, including the St. Mary Student Parish in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and the Beverly Hills United Methodist Church in Alexandria, VA.  For more than a decade, he was a volunteer organist at St. Dominic’s Catholic Church in southwest Washington, DC, near the U.S. Capitol, where he funded the restoration of the church’s 1887 Roosevelt pipe organ.

In recent years, Kevin has been active as a composer under the tutelage of Kirk Nurock, former Professor at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin and currently a member of the faculty of the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York.  Kevin includes among his influences, Bach, Debussy, Barber, and Bill Evans.

Kevin is a former member of the board of Wintergreen Performing Arts, which presents a classical summer music program in the mountains near Charlottesville, Virginia. With other key Wintergreen board members, Kevin was responsible for moving the organization toward professional leadership by recruiting composer and conductor Larry Alan Smith, former President of the School of American Ballet and former Dean of the Hartt School, as the Executive and Artistic Director. Kevin has also provided support to select musical artists and projects over the years, including sponsorship of performances and recordings by pianist Norman Kreiger and by Kirk Nurock.

When not overseeing National Sawdust, Kevin is Of Counsel in Shearman & Sterling’s Tax Group. Prior to joining Shearman & Sterling, Kevin was Senior Vice President, Tax Policy and Product Development, for Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc. Before joining Merrill Lynch, Kevin was Tax Partner at Weil, Gotshal & Manges. He was earlier Associate Chief Counsel (Technical & International) for the IRS, and on the staffs of the Office of International Tax Counsel at the Treasury Department, the Legislation and Regulations Division of the IRS Chief Counsel’s Office, and the Division of Market Regulation at the SEC.  Kevin is a co-author of a two-volume tax treatise on international transactions.

Rick currently serves as the Chairman of PriceWaterhouseCooper’s Insourced Solutions for Tax group. He joined PwC in 2014. Rick was with GE from 1991 through 2013, as Vice President and Senior Tax Counsel at GE Capital until 2005 and subsequently as Vice President and Senior Tax Counsel at General Electric Company. Rick served on the Boards of Directors of GE Capital Corporation and GE Capital Services from 2009 to 2012, and of GE SeaCo, a joint venture between GE and Sea Containers Ltd., from 1996 to 2011.

Rick currently serves as Lecturer in Law at Columbia Law School and Yale Law School. At Columbia, Yale and previously at Penn Carey Law and Georgetown University Law Center, Rick has taught Corporate Income Taxation, Federal Income Taxation, Deals & M&A, and Tax Policy.

Rick serves on the Penn Law Board of Advisors, was President of the Penn Law Alumni Board of Managers, and completed two terms on the Board of Trustees at Pitzer College. He is currently Chair of the Mitchell College Board of Trustees. Rick was on the Board of Directors of D​omusKids, a Connecticut child educational and welfare organization, from 1994 through 2018.

He also served as Board Chairman of ​Domus’​ ​charter school, Stamford Academy. Rick is a Board member and serves as Vice President of National Sawdust.

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I was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio. I received my undergraduate degree from The Ohio State University and my law degree from the University of Cincinnati. After graduating from law school and taking the Ohio Bar exam, I immediately began preparing for my move to New York. As a young girl I had dreamed of someday living in New York, because “if you can make it there” ...

And now I had my chance. I lived and worked in New York and Connecticut for the next 30 years. I started in 1985 with a large accounting and tax firm and moved three years later to an investment banking firm owned by General Electric. I would be fortunate enough to spend the next twenty-seven years in a variety of roles with GE. My work at GE included the opportunity to travel all over the world as an international tax counsel, and the opportunity to do two tours living and working in London.

My work at GE also afforded me the ability to financially support a variety of philanthropic causes important to me. After retiring from GE in 2015, I hoped to have the opportunity to support these causes with my time and professional skills as well. I have volunteered as a Guardian ad Litem for children removed from their homes, taught financial literacy to single mothers and mentored at risk youth on their path to college. I have been very involved with the Bay Park Conservancy in Sarasota, Florida in the efforts to preserve the natural beauty of Sarasota Bay and with the Office of Diversity and Inclusion at The Ohio State University. And I was lucky enough to be one of the first “investors” in National Sawdust. I hope that I will now be able to help in other ways.

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