Board of Directors
Ryan Harty, President
At home, Ryan Harty is a proud father of two kids who lend their voices to the Long Beach Youth Chorus. At work, Ryan is a Professional Engineer and Assistant Vice President of Honda's Sustainability and Business Development Business Unit, where he leads Honda's North American renewable energy, electric vehicle, and hydrogen fuel cell business development efforts.
Email: President@longbeachyouthchorus.org
Carrie Marraro, Treasurer
Business Manager, works at Heather R. Chambers, CPA, Inc.
Jackie Beery, Secretary
Jackie Beery has worked as a choir director, vocalist, and handbell ringer in churches and musical ensembles all around Southern California including Director of Music for Lakewood First UMC and Artistic Director of the Bellflower Civic Chorus. She has also led music and worship for several United Methodist Women’s yearly conventions and gatherings. She is also an accomplished and recorded vocalist and steel drum (pan) player.
Jackie lives in Lakewood, California with her very musical family, including two daughters who sing and perform regularly on trumpet, upright bass, percussion and marimba. Her husband, David, is a renowned steel drum and hand pan builder, tuner, composer, arranger and performer.
Mary E. Barton, Ph. D.
Mary E. Barton, Ph.D., is a retired Business professor, having taught at both CSU, Long Beach, and CSU, Northridge. She also worked in market research for a number of years, with clients such as Disneyland, hospitals, and the maritime industry, among others. Dr. Barton is a lifelong pianist and sang with the Long Beach Golden Sands Chorus as well as church choirs in the past. She has a strong interest in international affairs and has worked with the Long Beach Sister Cities for many years. She co-chaired Long Beach Reads One Book, a citywide literary festival, for 13 years, for the Long Beach Public Library Foundation./
Lynn Meldrum
Lynn Meldrum is a recently retired elementary school teacher. She taught nine years at Lincoln Elementary School and twenty-one years at John G. Whittier Elementary, both in LBUSD. She feels very strongly that music and other arts, as well as sports, help children to develop into healthy, happy, thriving, well-balanced adults. She is very interested in neuroscience, brain health, social emotional learning, and helping children and adults heal from trauma. Since retirement, she is enjoying more time to read, doing genealogy/ancestry research and taking lots of nature photos. Sunsets, flowers, and butterflies, these are a few of her favorite things.
Mariah Rae
Mariah Rae (she/her) is an American Filipina vocalist who currently resides in Long Beach. Mariah received a Master of Music in Opera Performance from the Bob Cole Conservatory of Music (BCCM) at California State University Long Beach in 2020 and a Bachelor of Arts in Vocal Performance and Journalism from Loyola Marymount University (LMU). Mariah started in musical theatre, choir, and piano at a young age prior to studying classical voice, and finds herself at the edge of operatic and choral spaces today. Mariah has appeared with Pacific Opera Project, Overtone Industries, Lyric Opera of Orange County, Long Beach Camerata Singers, and is a part of the GRAMMY®-winning vocal ensemble Tonality. Adjacently from singing, Mariah maintains a balance between her consulting work as a nonprofit database professional. As a multi-hyphenate professional, she strives to use her voice, unique skillset, and lived experience to be an example for her communities and uplift others on their journeys.
Katharin Rundus, DMA
Katharin Rundus, DMA, is a nationally recognized voice teacher, choral conductor, singer and author. As a gifted soprano, Dr. Rundus has performed in opera, oratorio, musical theater, and as a professional chorister in Italy, Germany, France, and England, as well as in the US. For twenty-five years she was the Director of Vocal Studies at Fullerton College where she taught voice and oversaw the more than one hundred and fifty students studying voice either privately or in classes each semester. During her tenure, she conducted the Fullerton College Chamber Singers and the Women’s Chorale. Since 2002 she has maintained a dynamic voice studio at the Bob Cole Conservatory of Music at the California State University at Long Beach. Her students from both music schools are successfully engaged in performing and teaching in the United States as well as Europe and Asia.
Katharin has presented workshops and clinics on voice building and voice training for teachers, choral conductors, and their students and choristers for more than twenty-five years,. In response to participants’ requests for more information about her ideas and vocal exercises, Cantabile: A Manual About Beautiful Singing (Pavane Publishing) was developed and published in 2009. A practical vocal pedagogy textbook, it is in a Third Edition (2022) and in use in colleges and universities throughout the United States and abroad. Cantabile Voice Class (Pavane Publishing, 2015), a text for academic voice classes, and Choral Cantabile (Pavane Publishing, 2017) continue to provide practical and voice science information for voice teachers and choral conductors.
Tiffany Salter
Event Planner
Robert Stapp
Robert Stapp, holds a BA and MCM in music and has served as Minister of Music at three churches over a period of 27 years. He also has a career in human resources having worked with several non-profits, Director of HR at Antioch University Los Angeles and as the head of HR for the State Bank of India, California.