Jennifer Hollis, CM-Th, MDiv

Project Director, Co-Founder

Jennifer Hollis is a writer, music-thanatologist and the author of Music at the End of Life: Easing the Pain and Preparing the Passage. She has offered music-thanatology to patients in Montana, Oregon, Chicago, and Boston. She is the Board President of the Accorda Music-Thanatology Institute and lives outside Boston with her family.

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Jennifer Mackinnon, MD, MM

Medical Director, Co-Founder, Advisory Committee Member

Jennifer Mackinnon, MD, MM is an Internal Medicine Physician at Froedtert General Internal Medicine Clinic and Associate Professor at the Medical College of Wisconsin. She has a Master’s in Harp Performance from Northwestern University and began volunteering then playing her small Irish Harp for the local hospice. She performed in Italy with the Rome Festival Orchestra for a season and at The Palace Hotel as the resident musician in Japan. Later after medical school at Rosalind Franklin University of Health Sciences/The Chicago Medical School and residency at the University of Illinois, she completed a research project on the effect of music on the heart collaborating with a cardiologist in the electrophysiology studies of patients. As attending physician at Cook County Hospital/ Assistant Professor at Rush University, Dr. Mackinnon would keep her harp in her office and had musical volunteers play for patients as well as she did through their Palliative Care Division.  Then upon moving to the Medical College of Wisconsin she works in the clinic with a large primary care practice and is director of Executive Health. She teaches Music in Humanities of the Arts Class for the medical school and has given many lectures from her work in women’s health to healthcare advocacy to the role of music.Most recently, the project Harps of Comfort came to light to help bring virtual musical sessions to patients in isolation with COVID.

Elizabeth Markell, CM-Th, CMP

Harpist

Elizabeth discovered music-thanatology while working as a massage therapist for hospice, and instantly knew this work was for her. She became a Certified Music Practitioner in 2007, working in Olympia, WA. After moving to Ashland, OR she finished training and became a Certified Music-Thanatologist in 2009.  She is grateful to live and practice in the Rogue Valley with her husband James Excell, mainly working with the 
palliative care team at Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center.

Kima Rodgers, CM-Th

Founding Friend

Kima is a Certified Music-Thanatologist since 2016. She has provided her services in various institutions in Brisbane, Australia, including St. Vincent’s Hospital, Wesley Mission Queensland and Palliative Care Queensland, St. Michael’s Hospice in Alberta, Canada, and Hope House, a hospice for the homeless in Tokyo, Japan. Her deep compassionate nature and desire to support the populations affected by the COVID-19 pandemic became a reality as she joined the Harps of Comfort team.

Duncan Saunders, M.A/A.B.S., CTHP 

Advisory Committee Chair

Duncan Saunders has been playing therapeutic and palliative harp for patients, staff and families since 1998 at two hospitals and a hospice in Washington state. He has extensive experience in working with psychiatric patients as well as playing in hospitals including the ED, the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, ICU and numerous other units. He believes and is dedicated to seeing therapeutic and palliatve harping in every hospital and hospice in the country, and currently serves on the Harps of Comfort Advisory Board. He is a Certified Therapeutic Harp Practitioner through the International Harp Therapy Program.

Dia Walker

Harpist

Claudia “Dia” Walker lives on Whidbey Island,  north of Seattle, Washington and has been a certified music thanatologist since 2008. She has been active in Music Thanatology Association International serving on the Certification team and has recently been a presenter for the group singing segment Schola Cantorum of MTAI’s Annual Conference