About our Staff and Volunteers

Advisory Board

Monique Bourdage, Project Director

While finishing a master's thesis on the electric guitar and the social construction of gender, Monique decided that Denver needed its own girls rock camp. She played percussion in the school band in 7th-9th grades, but didn't touch an instrument again until the age of 30 when she attended Ladies Rock Camp in Portland. Currently, she works as a legal assistant at Heupel Law. She will be entering a doctoral program for Media Studies this Fall and wishes she had more time to play her guitar.

Katie Rothery

Katie is a founding member of Girls Rock Denver and an avid supporter of the local music scene. She has worn many hats in her three years of volunteering with GRD while primarily focusing on community outreach, development, and administration. Katie truly believes that strong girls make for a strong community. She is looking forward to attending the 2010 Girls Rock Camp Alliance conference in March and learning to play the banjo this year so that she can one-day fulfill her dream of playing in an all-female octogenarian jug band.

Laura Yribia

Laura is a Founding Board Member of Girls Rock Denver and has volunteered with us since 2008. She is a songwriter who has played bass, guitar and performed vocals with Denver and New York City-based bands Garrett's Leaf, Gut, Red Lion and The Victory Splits. Laura has also been a band coach and songwriting workshop leader at the Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls in New York. She lives in Miami Beach, FL and works for the Knight Foundation.

Founding Volunteers

Linda Ruth Carter

Flannery O'Connor was quoted, "Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher." Sometimes when trying to catch up on the never-ending rush of often sub-par new music, I get the same idea about any program that might encourage yet another band to form. But then I think about how easily girls can get discouraged and feel as if things are out of their reach even without deliberate stifling. And then I remember how powerful and transforming a force music was to me as a girl, and in fact is still changing my world to this day. I believe that if a girls rock camp had been around for me when I was young, I would've really dug the chance for a place to rock out with other like-minded girls. Truly, a little encouragement and a lot less stifling can make all the difference in that difficult-to-negotiate decade of 8-18. The very best of anything we do always started out with an opportunity, the courage to try, and the confidence to keep at it. And that's why I am a volunteer of Girls Rock Denver, and happy to do what I can to help the cause.

Seth Donovan

Seth has hung out and worked with youth in various camp and creative settings for the last 12 years. She plays cello in the local Denver music scene and loves connecting new people, new forms, and social justice work to music. She's also pretty tired of the rhetoric that you have to have money, a certain gender, education, or pop culture looks to be an amazing musician. She currently works for a couple of non-profits that work on connecting the arts to social justice work and supporting youth in developing cultural power.

Rebecca Wright, Equipment Manager

Rebecca has spent ten years in the local Denver music scene, carrying gear, running sound boards, and graduating with a degree in audio engineering from the University of Colorado at Denver. She has gotten used to being one of the only girls doing such work on any given evening and wants very much to bring more girls into this world of distortion and rock and roll.

Girls Rock Denver is indebted to the countless unnamed volunteers and musicians that make our work possible. Our staff and volunteers are local educators, musicians, youth advocates, parents, and community members. Check back for camp staff bios.