Allison is the co-founder of EAST Collective, a musician, performer, educator, and lifelong believer in the power of the arts to bring people together.

Born and raised in the rural farmlands of Boyertown, Pennsylvania, Allison began singing almost as soon as she could talk—mostly because, as a little girl, she thought singing and talking were essentially the same thing. She joined her first choir at age three and began performing in theater at thirteen.

Allison holds a Bachelor of Music in Voice from Westminster Choir College and later studied Music Therapy at Belmont University. After college, she moved to New York City, where she studied acting at Matthew Corozine Studios, continued pursuing her love of theater, and had the opportunity to travel and perform on stages around the world.

In 2016, Allison and Ryan moved from New York City to Nashville. A year later, a lost set of car keys, a ride home from a dear friend, and a conversation about bringing Music Together® to East Nashville unexpectedly set her on the path to founding Tenn Little Birds. What began as a music program for young children grew into a thriving creative community for Nashville families—and ultimately helped inspire the creation of EAST Collective.

At EAST, Allison brings together the many threads of her life in the arts: music, theater, education, community-building, and the conviction that people of all ages need places where they can create, learn, perform, and belong.

She is grateful to have called East Nashville home for more than seven years—and now Madison—with her husband Ryan, their sons Edison and Finnegan, and their rescue pup, Bodhi. She remains very grateful for the lack of snow in Southern winters.

Ryan is the co-founder and Operations Director of EAST Collective, an actor, musician, technologist, and longtime believer that artists deserve both great places to work and the infrastructure that makes great work possible.

Born in San Francisco and raised in the suburbs of Seattle, Ryan came of age at the height of the grunge era, playing drums and singing in rock bands while studying mathematics at the University of Washington. After graduation, he briefly studied at Berklee College of Music and fronted another band in Boston before catching the acting bug and moving to New York City.

Nine months after arriving in New York, Ryan booked his first national tour, Aida. A year on the road led directly to his Broadway debut as Roger in RENT—an unusually quick introduction to a profession that soon taught him it wasn’t always going to be quite that easy.

A career lull eventually led Ryan to the Meisner technique and Matthew Corozine Studio, where he began studying in 2007. The work became a formative part of his life as an actor and, years later, the place where he would meet Allison. Ryan subsequently returned to Broadway in the revival of Hair, toured nationally with Hair and Once, and was part of the original Broadway production of Frank Wildhorn’s Wonderland.

Alongside his performing career, Ryan maintained a parallel career in technology—work he had first begun while in college. What started as a practical way to support life as an actor gradually developed into a second professional skill set in technology, systems, and operations.

In 2016, Ryan and Allison left New York for Nashville. Ryan helped form the Nashville Yacht Club Band and eventually returned to the stage in 2022 with May We All. Meanwhile, the community Allison had begun building through Tenn Little Birds was growing into something larger. When that evolution ultimately became EAST Collective, Ryan’s two seemingly unrelated professional lives suddenly made a surprising amount of sense together.

At EAST, he brings the artist’s perspective to the operational side of the organization, and vice versa, helping build a place where classes, rehearsals, performances, partnerships, and creative ideas have the support they need to actually happen.

Ryan and Allison now live in Madison with their sons Edison and Finnegan and the original first-born of the family, their adopted dog Bodhi.

Art teacher Shay Shiely has taught for years in a number of fields including special education and abroad. She also previously owned an at home art kit company and currently runs a custom embroidery business: Hillsboro Monograms

Shay is a Nashville native, daughter of artists and art educators, and now mother of three amazing kiddos.