Joanna Cooper, MD, along with Michael Cooper, MD, founded Maya's Music Therapy Fund after the death of their daughter Maya in 1988. The idea for the music therapy fund came from the visible joy Maya exhibited when listening to music and her transformation while participating, even in a very small way, in the creation of music.

Dr. Cooper has led the Maya's Music Therapy Fund Board of Directors since 2004. She also served on the Board of Directors of the Regional Center of the East Bay between 1985 and 1989 and chaired its Client Services Committee during that period. Dr. Cooper has been a member of a number of other community organizations. She is a practicing neurologist in Berkeley.

Maya's Music Therapy Fund has been a fitting memorial to Maya's spirit and, most importantly, has provided an avenue to give back to the community of people with severe developmental disabilities.

In June 2018, our Co-Founder and Chairperson of the Board Dr. Joanna Cooper was given the Jefferson Award by CBS San Francisco for outstanding volunteerism.

Joanna first met Maya in 1981 and became friends with Joanna Cooper and Charlie over the years. She served on the Maya's board previously and in 2005 took a leave to start her own healthcare advocacy business. Now retired, she is delighted to be back on the MMTF Board and began serving as Executive Director in the spring of 2023. The Spring Festival is her favorite MMTF program: she finds it exciting to see and hear the clients express themselves through music and watch the joy of their families. Joanna is a licensed clinical social worker with a Masters in Public Health and a Credential as an independent healthcare advocate.

Phyllis van Kranenburgh has been a neighbor and good friend of Titia Martin for many years. Her son, Alec, is a regular volunteer for Maya's Music Therapy Fund's annual music festival. One year, when he was away at college, Phyllis filled in helping out at the food concession. She observed, with delight, the positive effect that music therapy had in the lives of people with developmental disabilities. Phyllis joined the board in January 2016, shortly after retiring from her full time job as a paralegal for an Oakland law firm specializing in land use and public law.

Sandra is a MMTF lifetime volunteer, having grown up around music therapy with her mom Titia,  volunteering at the Spring Festival and Fall events, and being involved in the MMTF community. Her first job as a high schooler was as a youth counselor at DPRC in Richmond, one of the centers that Maya's partners with to bring individual and group music therapy sessions to children and adults.

After receiving her BA in Global Studies, she worked as a facilitator and educator in social-emotional learning and diversity education with the Bay Area organization The Mosaic Project. She also served as an arts administrator for several music nonprofits both in the Bay Area and Amsterdam. Her passion for working with youth led her to pursue her MA in International and Multicultural Education at USF in 2018, and since then she has developed curriculum and managed educational programs in both the private and nonprofit sectors.

Sandra joined MMTF's board in Summer 2021.

Stephen met Maya in l986 when his father, Charlie Pollack, and Joanna Cooper became partners. Spending time with Maya, it was clear to him that music resonated with her in a more profound way than any other form of communication. After Maya's death, Stephen volunteered and donated regularly for activities of Maya's Music Therapy Fund, and he became a board member in 2012.

Stephen is a partner in a human resource consulting firm. His area of expertise is executive compensation in not-for-profit organizations particularly in healthcare. Stephen's previous background is in human resources more broadly.

Heather Rosnow has been attending Maya's events for many years and was honored when asked to join the board. She is constantly amazed at all the wonderful progress and joy in the faces of the participants in the program. She greatly admires the passion and dedication of the Board members and especially of Titia Martin, MT-BC. Heather has a degree in Music Therapy from the University of the Pacific and works in marketing for a hospice company in the Bay Area.

Carl's daughter Anna was a longtime participant in Maya's programs and his wife Ellen served as the organization's Executive Director for many years. In addition to his board service with Maya's, Carl serves on the Board of Directors of Toolworks - a San Francisco-based social enterprise providing economic and social opportunities for people with disabilities.  He was previously a member of the Board of Equal Rights Advocates – a non-profit civil rights law firm fighting to expand the rights and opportunities of girls and women.

As President of Whitaker Communications, Carl assists law firms and non-profits with public relations and marketing matters. With more than 30 years of law firm and consulting experience, Carl provides focused, practical advice on public relations, positioning, marketing planning, and website development. He was Director of Marketing at Morrison & Foerster, a 1,000 lawyer international law firm, from 1992 to 2003.  Carl received a B.A., with Distinction, from Sonoma State University and a Masters Degree from the School of Library and Information Science at UC Berkeley.  

Yichen is an undergraduate student at UC Berkeley who leads a student-run volunteering ensemble that performs at assisted living centers, elderly homes, and hospitals in the local Berkeley community. Since the early days of the pandemic, Yichen has been organizing volunteer musical performances at these sorts of locations in an effort to dispel the loneliness to which the pandemic had subjected the patients and residents at these locations. For it is music which he has discovered can speak into their hearts and alleviate their emotional isolation when words alone cannot, and, for this reason, he is immensely grateful for his talents in performing music — specifically performing on the piano — which he has cultivated over much of his life.

At Berkeley, Yichen is currently studying philosophy, neurobiology, and computer science, and he aspires to become a neurologist or a neurosurgeon one day. Outside of school, he writes, performs in an orchestra, and practices kendo.