Rod Adams began playing trumpet at age eight. 1982 he was a quarter-finalist in the Song Lyric category of the American Song Festival. In 1987, he received an Honorable Mention Award in the Freestyle Lyric category in the Music City Festival. During the 1990's he worked with several performing artists. Rod is the recipient of the Carol Burnett Scholarship.

Kurt Lindsay joined the church choir at 13 and soon began to help out in its soundroom. After high school, he decided to pursue a career in sound, which led to enrollment at Mercy. After graduation, Kurt plans to become a recording engineer and a free-lance record producer.

Jessikah McKenzie comes from a musical family. Her father, a member of The Intruders would always sing around the house, and like her six older sisters, Jessikah developed an interest in singing from this. For the past four years at Mercy College, Jessikah has distinguished herself as the Lady Flyers basketball team's all-star center. Her immediate plans are to pursue basketball professionally. Following this, she would like to pursue a career songwriting, producing and performing music.

Melissa Nastasi is a Yorktown Heights native. She has played guitar for seven years and is currently a member of the band, Perfect Flaw. In 2001, the band won a songwriting contest, and their first single has had airplay on several radio stations. The band will have a cut on a Weezer tribute album, to appear later this year on Bulldog Records. She plans a career in artist management either independently, or as part of a record label's A&R Department.

Roger Paige has had a strong interest in music since age five. He plays keyboards, drums, guitar and deejays. At Mercy, Roger has developed his skills in sound manipulation and music production using such tools as the Akai MPC-2000, Logic Audio software and Pro Tools. After he finishes his degree, Roger plans to pursue a career as an independent record producer.

Nicky Pantlitz is a Dental Assistant and a senior at Mercy College. In her spare time, she composes music and plays piano and guitar. After graduation, Nicky hopes to land a position at a major record label, marketing and producing hip-hop artists.

Carlos Rodriguez is a senior who plans to start his own music production company. Carlos is particularly interested in sound design for cinema, multimedia and video games.

Dave Salierno began playing bass guitar at age 14 and later studied Jazz at the Westchester Conservatory of Music. Since the age of 18, Dave has been composing music using computers and drum machines. He hopes to pursue a career designing sound for film and video games.

Kirk Swaby developed an early interest in music as a singer in his primary school choir in Kingston Jamaica. This led to an interest in work in live sound and as a disc jockey. In 1998, he received a certificate from the Institute of Audio Research in New York. Currently a junior at Mercy College, Kirk is also working as an engineer at an independent record label and live sound company.

Stephen Ward is a member of the full-time faculty in the Music Industry & Technology Department at Mercy College. In addition to his teaching duties, he continues to work as a free-lance composer, engineer and recording studio design consultant. Recent projects include the music score for an episode of Frontline on PBS, music mixing for Inside Edition and several Court TV programs, and acoustic redesign of control rooms at Splash Studios and 8118 Music.