Board of Directors

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A guitarist with a repertoire ranging from Bach to the Beatles, Andrew Schulman has been a professional musician based in New York City since 1975. His life was saved, and changed forever, when music by Bach saved him in a coma.

To give thanks for that miracle he became the resident musician in the Surgical ICU at Beth Israel Medical Center from 2010-16, then played in the Surgical, Medical, and Neurosurgical ICUs at NYU Langone Medical Center in 2017. In January 2016 he began a monthly residency at Berkshire Medical Center in Pittsfield, MA with the title, Medical Musician; that lasted until 2020.  

In May 2019 Andrew Schulman began serving as a consultant to the Vanderbilt University Medical Center-Therapeutic Music in the ICU project for hospitalized patients, a two-year program. In February 2020 he was appointed Visiting Artist with the Georgetown Lombardi Arts and Humanities Program of Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

In August 2017 Andrew Schulman received the first certification for Medical Musician, from Berkshire Medical Center/University of Massachusetts Medical School. In September 2017 he was accepted as a professional member of the Society for Critical Care Medicine and has spoken and performed at several national and regional SCCM conferences. In 2020 he was appointed to a three-year term on the SCCM ICU Liberation Committee, and is now serving his second term. He is also a member of the International Association for Music & Medicine.

Andrew and his wife Wendy Sayvetz are the subjects of the documentary film Andrew & Wendy (2014) which has been presented at international film festivals and aired multiple times on PBS-TV. He is the author of Waking The Spirit: A Musician’s Journey Healing Body, Mind, and Soul (Macmillan:Picador, 2016), a world-wide release. He will be featured in the upcoming Netflix documentary, Heart Beat. He and Wendy live in New York City with their four legged furry kid, Phoebe, a Yellow Labrador Retriever.

Suzanne comes to MMI through the influence of her late husband, Robert Crim, a classical guitarist and lutenist who was a dear friend of Andrew Schulman. 

Reading Andrew’s journal, and then his book, about his work as a musician in the Beth Israel Medical Center Surgical ICU convinced her that music in critical care medicine was of great value to the well being of patients, family members, and the medical staff. 

A lawyer by training, she retired from the Federal government after 30  years with the Environmental Protection Agency, helping to protect our nation’s waters, including wetlands, coastal waters, and oceans.  While working she volunteered as a literacy tutor and a mentor for junior staff.  

In retirement, Suzanne volunteers with the  Sarcoma Alliance, sarcomaalliance.org. She is also a member of a local  charitable organization that supports local schools, students, food  banks, and other causes. In her spare time she enjoys going to concerts, spending time with family and friends, and enjoying seafood on the Delaware coast.

Javin Bose is a cellist, researcher, and aspiring physician who is passionate about exploring the intersection of music and medicine. He holds a Bachelor of Music in Cello Performance from the Vanderbilt University Blair School of Music, where he studied under Dr. Felix Wang. After earning his undergraduate degree, Javin went on to obtain a Postbaccalaureate Pre-Medical Certificate from the University of Virginia. He currently works as a clinical research coordinator in the Department of Neurosurgery at the Mount Sinai Hospital. Javin has cultivated a unique blend of skills and experiences that bridge the worlds of art, medicine, and clinical research.

Javin's passion for therapeutic music began with his volunteer work at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where he participated in a pilot program using live classical music to alleviate stress and anxiety in the intensive care unit. There he realized the profound impact that music can have on patients and the importance of art and humanism in medicine.

Javin has co-authored a systematic review and meta-analysis on the effects of music therapy in angiographic procedures. Additionally, Javin has contributed to a paper on implementing and evaluating the therapeutic music in the ICU program at Vanderbilt. These works were published in the Journal of NeuroInterventional Surgery and International Journal of Critical Care, respectively. 

Currently, Javin is studying the impact of live music performance on stroke recovery and its role in the neurocritical care setting. His ongoing efforts aim to enhance patient outcomes and promote the use of music as a therapeutic tool. Javin also has interests in the use of sound as a neuro-modulatory tool, specifically the use of 40 Hz gamma entrainment in the treatment of Alzheimer’s Disease and stroke. 

As a clinical research coordinator, Javin facilitates clinical trials evaluating novel methods of treating cerebrovascular disease, with a particular focus on spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage. He is deeply committed to advancing the field of neurosurgery. In his free time, Javin continues to play the cello and loves to support live music performance in New York City.

Eric Despard received his medical musician certification after attending a 50-hour MMI Medical Musician Workshop July 2017. He also worked privately with MMI co-founder, Andrew Schulman, to develop his medical musician skills. He then began working as a Medical Musician intern at Berkshire Medical Center in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

Despard is now the inaugural Executive and Artistic Director of the Arts at William & Mary where he promotes the arts across campus and the local and regional communities across the Virginia Peninsula. He was previously the Director of Cultural Arts at the University of Houston-Clear Lake where he managed the Bayou Theater, the UHCL Art Gallery, and stewarded the UHCL art collection at UHCL Pearland and UHCL Texas Medical Center campuses.

He was an Associate Professor of Humanities, the Music and Art Director and served as the Executive Director of the Laumeister Art Center at Southern Vermont College in Bennington, Vermont where he developed a Bachelor of Arts Major in Arts Administration and a music minor.

A concert classical and jazz guitarist as well as composer, Eric performs regularly throughout the U.S. as a soloist and with his new music group, the Progression Ensemble. He holds a graduate degree from the Yale School of Music and an undergraduate degree from the Hartt School at the University of Hartford.