CHARLES GROSS has written music for films, television and theatre. He received an Emmy for his score to Rodeo Red and the Runaway. He also received a Wrangler award for the music for Heartland, a Golden Bear winner at the Berlin Film Festival. Among his other film scores are Robert Frost: A Lover’s Quarrel With The World (which won an Academy Award for the best feature documentary), The Group, Country, Turner and Hootch and Air America. For television he wrote the highly praised music for The Dain Curse, Teacher, Teacher (another Emmy Award winning show) as well as scores for the series Call to Glory, Nurse, and A Rumour of War. Among his numerous other television film credits was the notable Burning Bed (with Farah Fawcett).
He has also written incidental music for the theatre including Richard III (with Al Pacino), The Blacks, King Lear (NY Shakespeare Festival), The Great White Hope, The Condemned of Altona (Repertory Theatre of Lincoln Center) and various scores for Arena Stage in Washington.
A graduate of Harvard College with a degree in psychology, he also studied at the New England Conservatory of Music and was a pupil of Darius Milhaud and Leon Kirchner at Mills College. At the insistence of the US government he spent three years as an arranger for the USMA band, West Point.
JOAN GROSS studied dance with Jose Limon as a teenager and then spent two years as a scholarship student at Jacob’s Pillow. She continued her dance studies at Bennington College, and after attending the University of Chicago as an English major, received an MA in dance from Mills College in Oakland, California.
She was a professional dancer for many years, studying with Martha Graham, Richard Thomas, Benjamin Harkarvy and Muriel Stuart of the School of American Ballet. She later taught improvisation and theatre games at the Columbia University School of the Arts.
She received her MSW at the NYU School of Social Work, and subsequently trained at the American Institute for Psychoanalysis at the Karen Horney Center, where she is now a faculty member, supervisor and training analyst. She has been a psychoanalyst for the past 18 years.
Emily Gross O’Neil is a nonprofit executive and philanthropic leader with more than two decades of experience advancing arts, culture, and community-based organizations.
She most recently served for nearly seven years as Executive Director of the New Art Center, where she led the organization through growth, expanded access to arts education, strengthened governance and fundraising, and guided the organization through the COVID-19 pandemic. Previously, Emily served as Executive Director of the Fort Point Arts Community, where she elevated organizational visibility, revenue, and partnerships while supporting artists at the intersection of arts, business, and community. She also held development roles at the American Repertory Theater.
Earlier in her career, Emily worked in the commercial gallery sector at Barbara Krakow Gallery in Boston and Smith Andersen Editions in Palo Alto, and in community development at Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción (IBA), where arts and culture played a central role in neighborhood revitalization.
Emily has served as Executive Director of the Charles and Joan Gross Family Foundation since its incorporation in 2006 and is taking on increased oversight of the Foundation’s philanthropic strategy, advancing her parents’ legacy through support for arts, culture, education, and community organizations.
She holds a B.A. magna cum laude in Art History from Bowdoin College and a Master’s degree in Urban Policy from Tufts University. Emily lives in Massachusetts and New York and remains deeply committed to thoughtful philanthropy and arts-driven community building.