Sophia Welz

Sophia Welz, the Managing Director of the South African National Youth Orchestra Foundation, has two passions: the arts and people. Her varied work contexts in the public and private sectors and in community environments, as well as in music performance and arts management, have included the equestrian unit of the South African Police Service, an orchestra course for the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq in Erbil, and a NGO focused on non-violent communication in South African prisons. In 2011 she featured as one of the Mail & Guardian’s Top 200 Young South Africans, in 2012 she completed the Social Entrepreneurship Certificate Programme at the Gordon Institute of Business Science in Johannesburg, she sat on the Executive Committee of the arts advocacy organisation Arterial Network’s South African chapter from 2013 to 2018, and in 2017 she was selected as a faculty member for the inaugural international Culture Summit in Abu Dhabi. Believing that well-rounded musicians become well-rounded people, her dream is a South Africa that offers all her children equal access to high-quality arts education.