MEMPHIS – The Soulsville Foundation announced today that Richard Greenwald will be stepping down as President and CEO to join Menlo Park, California’s 4-Good Ventures. Longtime Memphis music advocate Pat Mitchell Worley will become the new President and CEO effective August 1st. Mitchell Worley is the Soulsville Foundation’s Deputy Director and former Stax Music Academy (SMA) Executive Director. Production Director and longtime music producer and engineer Isaac Daniel is now the SMA Executive Director.
Greenwald, who made a five-year commitment to lead the organization when he was hired in 2017 and has been carefully planning his transition for months, will remain involved as a member of the Soulsville Foundation board of directors.
Mitchell Worley brings decades of experience to her new role. She began teaching part-time at the Stax Music Academy in 2017 and was promoted to executive director in 2018. She has been the co-host of Beale Street Caravan for almost 20 years, a globally syndicated roots radio show broadcast from Memphis. A former development director for the Memphis Music Foundation, she can be heard narrating selections in the B.B. King Museum, Cotton Museum, Mississippi River Museum, and in numerous documentaries on Memphis history and music. She regularly hosts artist Q&As for organizations such as the GRAMMY Museum Mississippi and Oxford American. Among her other roles was serving on the staff of the Blues Foundation in the late 1990s, where she oversaw all of the international nonprofit’s communications and educational efforts alongside helping produce the W.C. Handy Blues Awards, the Lifetime Achievement Awards, and the International Blues Challenge.
Daniel has been with SMA for more than 10 years. He began as a part time instructor and later became Production Director of the department that includes beginner and college prep courses in the functions and operations of home studio, commercial studio, and live performance production.
“It is very exciting to take the helm of an organization that means so much to Memphis’ past, present, and future,” Mitchell Worley said. “The legacy of Stax Records is in this city’s DNA and has been since the late 1950s. Now, an entire generation of young people are still being influenced by that legacy more than 60 years later and, hopefully, will continue long after my work is done.”
“It has been an absolute pleasure to have worked with the Soulsville Foundation staff and board of directors for the past five years,” said Greenwald. “I have met so many fascinating people, from music stars and Stax Records icons to the students and families we work with every day. It has been incredibly rewarding to have served as CEO of such a vital organization and I look forward to its continued success.”
Daniel added, “People all over the world know about the Stax Music Academy and the wonderful work we do, but many people don’t know what it takes to accomplish the results we see. This is hard work, but we have a team in place that’s up for the challenge.”
ABOUT THE SOULSVILLE FOUNDATION
The Soulsville Foundation is a 50i (c) 3 nonprofit organization that oversees and raises funding for the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, Stax Music Academy, and The Soulsville Charter School, all of whom share a vibrant campus at the original site of Stax Records in Memphis, Tennessee in the neighborhood known as Soulsville USA. During the 1960s and 1970s, Stax launched and boosted the careers of soul music icons Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, Booker T. & the M.G.’s, the Staple Singers, Johnnie Taylor, Rufus and Carla Thomas, Sam & Dave, Albert King, Wilson Pickett, and dozens of others. The Soulsville Foundation’s mission is to perpetuate the soul of Stax Records by preserving its rich cultural legacy, educating youth to b