Local professionals will be invited to join the discussion with the students for a minimum of four weeks of class.

Contributing bloggers include:

Robin Williams: Director of Programs, New Orleans Jazz Institute

Ronald Markham: CEO, New Orleans Jazz Orchestra

Kabir Sehgal: Banker, jazz bassist, entrepreneur, political aide and author Kabir Sehgal received degrees from Dartmouth College and the London School of Economics. He has performed and toured with Wynton Marsalis as well as serving as a special assistant to Senator Max Cleland on the John Kerry presidential campaign. He is the co-founder of Music For Tomorrow, and is the author of Jazzocracy: Jazz, Democracy, and the Creation of a New American Mythology. His forthcoming book is Walk in My Shoes (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2010). He works at JPMorgan and lives in New York.

Madeline Murphy: Outreach Coordinator, New Orleans Public Library

Shweta Kohsmann: Shweta Kohsmann was raised in Slidell, Louisiana and moved to New Orleans in 2004 to attend The University of New Orleans (UNO).  Very recently, she graduated from UNO with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and now plans to attend law school in the not-too-distant future. Because living in New Orleans is meaningful to her, she hopes to live in the city for a very, very long time.