Drake Driscoll has established herself as both a versatile performer and advocate for social change through music. Her commitment to the arts includes a significant component of administrative and community work in addition to her performance and teaching opportunities as a cellist.

Drake is the Executive Director and Co-founder of The VISION Collective, an ensemble dedicated to building meaningful relationships with and among refugees and new Americans by sharing music between diverse communities. In 2019, VISION embarked on their first overseas tour, performing one concert at each of three refugee camps in central Germany, interacting with 120 children and adults from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, and Turkey. Drake is also a member of the United Nations Chamber Music Society and was a Gluck Community Service fellow at The Juilliard School. 

Drake’s community work has led to a love for arts administration. She is currently the Education and Community Engagement Manager at Young Concert Artists. In this role, Drake cultivates educational partners for YCA in New York City and Washington DC and guides YCA artists as they develop their own community engagement projects. Formerly, Drake worked as the Coordinator for the Learning and Engagement Programs team at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute, Management Associate at After Arts, and Marketing and Production Assistant for the NYC branch of Music for Food, a concert series devoted to relieving food insecurity across the United States. Drake was also a summer intern for Reach Teach Play at the Ravinia Festival, working with their Sistema Ravinia and Music Discovery programs.

A passionate teacher who loves working with kids, Drake is a substitute coach for the Juilliard Pre-College chamber music program and has a private studio of cello students in NYC and Greenwich, CT. She has also served as the Teaching Assistant to Hans Jørgen Jensen and Julia Lichten at the Meadowmount School of Music. In the spring of 2021, Drake held an adjunct faculty position at Walnut Hill School for the Arts, teaching an Arts and Community Engagement seminar and guiding high school seniors in designing and implementing their own social change projects.

Drake was a member of the 2020-2021 Global Leaders Program cohort, pursuing an Executive Graduate Certificate in Social Entrepreneurship, Cultural Agency, Teaching Artistry, and Civic Leadership. In the spring of 2020, she graduated from The Juilliard School with a Master of Music degree where she was the recipient of the George J. Jakab Global Enrichment Grant, the Juilliard Entrepreneurship Grant, the Norman Benzaquen Career Advancement Grant, and the Robert Sherman Award for Music Education and Community Outreach. She received a Bachelor of Music degree from Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music, and previously attended the New England Conservatory Preparatory School and Walnut Hill School for the Arts where she graduated with the Music Department Award. Her previous teachers include Elizabeth Beilman, Natasha Brofsky, Hans Jørgen Jensen, and Nicole Johnson.