Biography

Wesley Ryan Pinkham (from here on out, known as "I") was born in the year 1988 of the Gregorian Calendar. I had the pleasure of moving to UCLA for a short, albeit fruitful stint in college. This period of college followed a short, albeit fruitful stint in high school in Huntington Beach, California. I did the bulk of my growing up prior to the inclusion of "The" into the County of Orange, as in The OC. In the Fall of 2008, I traveled abroad to study at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. You can find my travel blog from this semester abroad at JerusalemSyndrome. At UCLA, the World Arts and Cultures department has become my intellectual home, and I also enjoyed picking up a minor in Jewish Studies.

I've always been interested in music, art and technology. I started piano at age eight and paid for my gas money in high school teaching music to a couple o students. I learned guitar at age fourteen and began songleading in the Jewish community at a number of synagogues around Orange County. I've worked as a music director or songleader at Surf City Synagogue, Temple Beth Tikva, Congregation B'nai Tzedek, Camp Newman/SWIG, Temple Beth David and UCLA Hillel.

I was instrumental in developing the Commercial Recording Arts Department at Huntington Beach High School's Academy for the Performing Arts. CRAD is now an unbelievable program for high school students to develop real world skills in live music production, recording arts, and music history. With CRAD, I've taught Podcasting for the Classroom at the Orange County Department of Education and the Computers in Education Conference in Palm Springs.

I currently work at The Music Center, the chain of four of the most important performing arts venues in LA. As an entry-level Development Assistant, I spend my time answering phones, stuffing envelopes and helping out many of the most important arts philanthropists in the world! I'm also spearheading the digitization of the entire backcatalog of donor records.

At the Skirball Cultural Center, I was a Programs Intern through a grant by the Los Angeles County Arts Commission. One of my highlights at the Skirball was as an on-floor curator for Stan's Cafe's presentation "Of All the People in All the World" where rice piles were used to represent mind-boggling statistics of our human world. While studying abroad in Jerusalem, I worked with international public relations and marketing firm Ruder Finn. With Ruder Finn I worked heavily on a number of accounts that pushed my intellect and experiences to the limit, including the Eilat-Eilot Energy Conference, International Christian Embassy of Jerusalem, and the Facing Jihad Conference. In the Summer of '09, I worked with the staff of Grand Performances, one of the premiere international music venues in Los Angeles.