Meet the Staff

Katie Blankenship

Music Department Director, Director Tennessee Teens Rock Camp (TNTRC), Director Southern Girls Rock n Roll Camp

Katie Blankenship is Music Department Director and serves as Director for TNTRC’s Nashville session. She holds a Master of Arts from New York University with a focus in non-profit art administration and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of California, Santa Cruz, in Cultural Anthropology. Katie is presently a Juris Doctor Candidate at Belmont University College of Law. Katie has been a working musician for seven years, and has formed several bands in both New York and Tennessee. Katie began her work with YEAH as volunteer instructor at SGRRC in 2008 and went on to become the Music Department Director for YEAH in 2009. She is the recipient of a 2012 Harold Love Community Service Award.

Lizzie Conner

Assistant Director, Southern Girls Rock and Roll Camp (SGRRC) and Tennessee Teens Rock Camp (TNTRC)

First a camper at Southern Girls Rock n’ Roll Camp, I fell in love with YEAH’s ideals and goals in the summer of 2008. Less than a year later, I organized Zeitgeist, a music festival of high school bands at the University School of Nashville. I quickly began to see the continuity of ideas and goals behind both Zeitgeist and YEAH: both the event and the organization strived to provide young people opportunities and tools for empowering artistic expression. So after volunteering at all three rock camps run under YEAH during the summer of 2010, I joined the staff as Assistant Director of SGRRC and TNTRC. Also a musician, I’ve played in a folk duo called Ave Marling, an all-girl grunge trio called MOM, playing guitar, banjo, ukulele, accordion, and stompboxin’ up a storm. I continue to write/perform/tour as a solo gal now under my own name, as well as in a brand new orchestralesque folk band called Honey Locust.