Annelise Kopp (General Manager)
Atlanta-born and Asheville-raised, Annelise Kopp has been a longtime supporter and fan of independent radio. She joined 103.3 Asheville FM’s board of directors in 2023 and stepped into the role of General Manager in 2025. Since 2017, she has worked behind the counter and behind the scenes at Harvest Records, an independent record store on Haywood Road. Annelise has been DJing under the name DJ Lil Meow Meow since 2015, sharing her love of music from behind the decks. She loves sharing music with people any way she can and believes deeply in the mission of Asheville FM and its value to the community. She’s dedicated to nurturing a station that truly connects with and uplifts Asheville.
Christy Rhodes (President, Board of Directors)
Christy is a WNC native who has spent her days working in policy and nonprofit worlds and her evenings listening to punk bands. After moving away to Louisville, Ky for about a decade, she returned to Asheville and realized the mountain community she grew up in had changed quite a bit. She luckily discovered Asheville FM by way of its annual record fair and the rest was history. She found that the best way to align her love of music and love of community was by getting more involved with this station and its people and previously served as Fund Drive Coordinator and currently as an on-air DJ, Board President, and The New Wave fan girl. When she’s not talking about the importance of music and community, you’ll find her hanging out with her cats or asking people about their cats.
Mark Drozd (Vice President, Board of Directors)
Mark Drozd is a long-time senior communications professional, with a career path that ranged from Chicago to New York. His forte is in helping businesses and organizations find real connections with their audiences and employees. For the last decade, he was a founding partner of a volunteer group that provided pro bono ad and design services to over 70 needy nonprofit organizations. Mark’s lifelong love for radio is rooted in that same idea of connecting communities. He lives in the AVL area with his wife Gail, a local artist, along with their 90-lb. Berner puppy Rosie
Eric Chaplinsky (Secretary, Board of Directors)
Erik moved to Asheville in 2021 and found 103.3 AshevilleFM during the 2022 spring Fun Drive as he was walking down Haywood Road and chatted with the volunteers. He was so impressed by their enthusiasm that a few weeks later, he attended his first interest meeting. His radio experience began in the early 2000s as a DJ and music director at WUAG 103.1 FM at UNC-Greensboro. Erik’s community organizing experience also began in Greensboro, where he was part of the administrative team for a live-music performance space before moving to the west coast and bartending for a decade. He now serves the Asheville community as a clinical social worker specializing in the field of addictive disorder treatment. Erik is a feverous feline enthusiast, a current on-air DJ, and a chaperone for the youth radio program, the New Wave.
Hope Butterworth (Treasurer, Board of Directors)
Hope grew up listening to WUSC in Columbia, SC, where her love for local, eclectic radio programming was born. Hope has been active in non-profits in and around Asheville since moving here from Chicago in 1998. She has experience in fundraising, bookkeeping and finance, as well as community outreach and team-building. She has volunteered extensively in local public schools and neighborhood community organizations. She believes deeply in Asheville FM’s mission of amplifying voices to build connections across our community. Hope previously served as President of the Board at Asheville FM.
Jeff Amal (At-large member, Board of Directors)
Jeff is a percussionist, curator, and community organizer based in Asheville. Since 2016, he has served as Executive Director of the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, expanding exhibitions, performances, and securing its permanent downtown home. A lifelong music fan, he grew up near Athens, GA, with REM and the B-52s in his heart, studied with Milford Graves, followed Cecil Taylor around in the 1990s, and has performed internationally in venues from concert halls to anarchist squats. He is committed to DIY artist-led spaces, independent media, and creative communities.
Ayana Dusenberry (At-large member, Board of Directors)
Ayana is from Jersey City, NJ where she dreamed of becoming a music publicist, an A&R guy, or the next Rick Ruben. Then September 11th happened, changed everything, and a needed road trip out of the city to visit Asheville turned into an unexpected life in Asheville. Here she’s been able to hone her love for PR and audience development through a career in marketing, primarily working in media and with independent businesses ever since. She was the first digital sales and marketing coordinator at Mountain Xpress, led marketing and events for WNC magazine, and is currently directing the marketing for several local brands, including restaurants and a brewery. In addition to being an avid listener, she’s been involved in underwriting and sponsorships with Asheville FM as a media partner since its launch and officially joined as a volunteer in spring 2023. She now helps the social media team and sits on the Development, and Publicity and Promotions Committees where she hopes to continue fulfilling her music industry fantasy all while supporting a radio station and community she loves.
Julio Tordoya (At-large member, Board of Directors)
Julio was born in Peru where he studied education and graphic design as well as photography and journalism. After teaching for four years in a rural community outside Lima in 2006 he moved to Charlotte NC to teach Spanish in an elementary school as a visiting teacher. After that, he moved to Asheville in 2010 where he got deeply involved with immigrant communities, working as a photographer in all of Western North Carolina.
After the US Social Forum along with Magaly Urdiales he founded MECA (Media Education for Community Action) to organize and train latinx people in areas of photography, reporting, editing, and broadcasting with the purpose to gain representation in the local media spectrum. Since 2014 he started JMPRO TV a local news channel running online. In 2018 Julio started La Neta a radio show on Asheville FM, with a series of segments and programs that are produced, recorded, and edited by members of our Latinx community.
At the moment Julio is working on creating new ways to contribute to the social justice movement from the side of the media, coming from the field of education he is willing to contribute their experience gained in the last ten years.
Misha Eli (At-large member, Board of Directors)
Misha has been a leader in the fields of Arts, Education, and Social Action for decades. In 2009, Misha graduated from East-West College of Natural Medicine, and as a Physician and Minister, formed Spiral Enterprises, a creative clearinghouse, in an effort to further build bridges across age and cultural gaps.
His portfolio includes projects such as Harvey Milk Festival, EARTHDANCE, Lovelight Yoga and Arts Festival, Volunteer Community Connections, TED, Florida Creativity Conference, Association of Florida Teaching Artists, The Flow Factory, FloydFest, LEAF Global Arts, Burning Man, Majestic Collaborations, Southern Atlantic Hemp & Arts Expo, and Art Army AVL. After moving here in 2018, Misha now dedicates his time “connecting the dots” in Asheville, as well as traveling the Globe, stewarding transformative experiences through Play.
Bryan Matheny (At-large member, Board of Directors)
Bryan Matheny brings over 40 years of business entrepreneurship with a commitment to social and environmental justice, and a lifelong love of community supported radio to 103.3. Born and raised in Denver CO, Bryan spent much of his life in the South with one side of his family and fell in love with Asheville in 1987. He and his wife Kelli moved here in 2019. His love for live music of all genres and being a lifelong musician himself, led to the creation of AVLFest in 2020 with a successful inaugural event in 2023.
Mary Alice Arre (At-large member, Board of Directors)
Mary Alice Arre created Global Heart LLC to oversee www.globalheart2heart.com, promoting art and poetry and host to Global Heart 2 Heart Radio, a 24/7 commercial free internet radio promoting and honoring music of all cultures in the name of Love for All and Mother Earth thus advancing Oneness of people and planet. She is a graduate of Colorado Media School. Mary Alice is a Board Certified Reflexologist who founded and operated New Jersey Institute of Reflexology for 20 years. She is a proud corporate drop out having held top managerial and training positions in food service, franchising and retail.
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TL Allen ( Board Member Emeritus (Deceased))
TL Allen (best known as CousinTL) has been a part of Asheville’s community radio for over 11 years now. In 2009 TL volunteered to help rebrand the Mountain Area Information Network to M@in-FM. At WPVM, he produced and hosted the highly-rated Supa Dupa Show, a talk show that was syndicated through the Pacifica network in 24 cities and distributed as a podcast in 6 different platforms. He later produced, revised, and hosted Asheville New Radio (to be retitled Asheville NU Radio). From 2014 to the present, TL has been producing, engineering, and hosting the popular show, CousinTL’s Stank Free Radio on 103.3 Asheville FM.
Originally from Detroit, Michigan, TL grew up as a fan of the city’s unparalleled radio market. Not knowing how good he had it, TL would consume shows from different radio stations in all genres (talk and music alike), listening to diverse radio personalities. He studied radio and television production in high school and later studied art direction and commercial marketing in college and art school. After that he went on to be certified in graphic/web design and animation. During this period TL moonlighted as a “mid-act” comedian, touring with headliners in the Great Lakes region (Michigan, Indiana, and Canada) and later, the New York/New Jersey circuits.
Since 2002 TL has worked in consulting for operational workflows that became ISO certified in corporations such as Ford Motor Company and Goldman Sachs. He would go on to freelance at different media companies (USA networks, Lifetime, American Broadcasting Company [ABC], and FOX Sports) assisting with the conversion from analog to digital HD.
As a freelance graphic designer, TL has worked on and has appeared in printed advertisements, publicity materials, newspaper comics, and social media, having created designs not only for corporate companies but also “Mom & Pops.”
From 2002 to 2008, TL would volunteer at Symposia Bookstore (a community center and internet café/ show venue and discussion forum place that happened to sell used books) in Hoboken, New Jersey. TL helped to create the nonprofit’s mission, as the store became a major asset to the Hudson County community. TL. Allen was awarded the Symposia Award for Building Community in Hoboken. This allowed him to speak at many seminars and workshops sharing the achievements (events, discussion groups, technology sharing, and fundraisers) with other community outlets and nonprofits for their benefit.
Cousin TL has been volunteering at Asheville FM since July 2014. Serving as a “self-proclaimed” older cousin, mentoring other volunteers on-air and off. In 2015, he became Asheville FM ‘s first production director. Then, TL served as an interim-program director to be named program director the following year. He continued to serve as an at-large member of the programming committee until January 2020. In 2016, with the encouragement of that year’s program committee, TL help developed an on-air “test the waters”-type opportunity for new volunteers. This experimental show is now known as The Sandbox Hour, and it has become a valuable part of the Asheville FM training protocol.
Robert Price (Underwriting Director)
Robert Price is the Underwriting Director at 103.3 Asheville FM. Born in Brooklyn, NY and braised in Miami, FL, he booked and promoted shows at Churchill’s Hideaway and formed the experimental band Kreamy ‘Lectric Santa. His path has taken him through Atlanta, Hershey, PA, and Oakland, CA, where he worked as a telemarketing manager, before settling in Asheville in 2011. There, he created the radio show Beyond the Realm of Comprehension. Since stepping into a paid role in November 2019, Robert has helped grow station revenue and build community partnerships, supporting events like the annual Record Fair, and Voices. His work centers on building community and supporting diversity and inclusion. Outside the station, Robert is a caregiver for bandmate Priya Ray and a musician working with guitar, electronics, vocals, found objects, and whatzits.