Nina Korelitz Matza

A big picture thinker and entrepreneur with a passion for helping people, Nina has spent her career creating innovative marketing and business platforms, examining consumer (human) behavior, and bringing new products and productions to highly successful fruition. After 15 years as a senior marketing executive in the luxury goods market, Nina now focuses full time on her life-long passion, conceiving and producing theatrical and media projects. These two closely related passions were sparked by a fascination with human behavior, coupled with a 15-time visit to the Imperial Theater to see Ben Vereen in Pippin. 

Nina holds a Bachelor of Arts in Art History and Italian from Connecticut College and a Master of Business Administration from N.Y.U. Her career began with a two-year Buyer’s training program at Bloomingdales. After obtaining her MBA, she spent 15 years focusing on consumer insights, innovative international marketing concepts, and new product idea generation for global corporations such as Estee Lauder, Remy Martin, and Coty. As a global business executive, Nina’s favorite projects involved staging impactful executive presentations, including, for example, leading General Managers from around the world on a 6 a.m. hike in Sedona, to inspire them to connect with nature in preparation for learning about a new brand concept. Through these projects, Nina discovered that her true calling was as an idea generator, people connector, and challenger of the status quo. This became the impetus for her second career as an independent strategic consultant and entrepreneur. Her first key accomplishment of that period was the creation and marketing of a brand of agendas and organizing products called Whomi, which were sold in major retailer stores nationwide.

In 2016 Nina formed Dot Dot Productions with her sister, the author Jean Hanff Korelitz. For three consecutive years (2016-18) Dot Dot, in partnership with the Irish Repertory Theater and the American Irish Historical Society, produced a site-specific, immersive version of James Joyce's THE DEAD in New York City. The Dead, 1904, adapted by Jean Hanff Korelitz and her husband, the Irish poet Paul Muldoon, from the famous novella, played to sold-out audiences and critical acclaim. Dot Dot productions now has several other projects in development. Nina was also a co-producer on the widely praised recent off-Broadway production of Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish and several other upcoming productions.

Nina is the creator and producer of the Listen More podcast, with Dr. Anne Marie Albano, Director of the Columbia University Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders, which examines the contemporary experience of adolescence. Having raised boy/girl twins, now 22 years old, Nina and her husband, Creative Director and Corporate Identity expert Robert Matza, have been front row observers of the turbulence of adolescence and the issues that this generation, in particular, is confronting. 

Nina spent five years on the Board of Trustees of Ars Nova where she continues to serve in an advisory capacity. Ars Nova is a thriving not-for-profit theater company that has become a launching pad for many of today’s most prolific theater writers, composers, and directors (Lin-Manuel Miranda, Dave Malloy, Shaina Taub, Rachel Chavkin). She is also a founding member of the Advisory Council of The New Victory Theater, where she spearheaded a career-development advisory program for the High School and College students who serve as Ushers in the theater.

In her free time, Nina enjoys seeing every theater production possible, studying ancient philosophy and taking long walks with dear friends and family.

Anne Marie Albano

Anne Marie Albano is a clinical child and adolescent psychologist and professor at Columbia University Medical Center. She is the founder and director of the Columbia University Clinic for Anxiety and Related Disorders and a highly regarded leader in the field of cognitive behavioral therapy. Anne Marie served as president of the Society for Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology and also for the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, and has been awarded grants from the National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH) to study treatments for depression in adolescents and anxiety in children and adolescents. The main focus of her research is the development of novel and credible ways to identify and treat anxiety and mood disorders in youth.  She’s a journal editor, is highly published in her field, and works as a therapist, educator, and clinical researcher. Anne Marie devotes time to publishing and presenting her work at conferences and workshops throughout the USA and across the globe, as her passion is in spreading the word to students, young mental health professionals, and clinicians of all stripes that there are effective ways to identify youth who are floundering due to anxiety or depression and to treat and enhance the emotional well being of adolescents, young adults, and their parents.

On the personal side, according to her mother, "Anne Marie's been using psychology on us since she started walking." As a child, Anne Marie was dogged by phobias and could break free from an adult’s grasp and run like an Olympic sprinter away from her family doctor when he brought out a syringe, causing the doc, his nurse, and her parents to strategize having an adult at each exit point of his practice to block her and deliver the booster shot. It’s no wonder that she studies phobias in kids.

A move from New York City to South Florida at the start of high school further sensitized her to the angst and challenges of the developmental period known for "storm and stress." Recognizing that she did not talk or dress at all like her new peers in Ft. Lauderdale, it was sink or swim to make it in a strange, cotton-and-pastel-wearing peer environment while managing raging social anxiety. After failing algebra (Yay! Another reason to feel embarrassed!) and being put in remedial math, Anne Marie found her voice in student government and yearbook, and now looks back most fondly on her high school years, even with the parting comment of a teacher to her mother that “Anne Marie is going to make someone a good housewife.” To this day she believes that nun had special powers to put curses on people as Anne Marie did not marry until age 44, although this affirmed her belief that “good things come to those that wait and are very, very picky.” Her mom’s comment was “If you want to be a housewife, then be the best housewife ever and show that BEE-AACH what you’re made of!”.

Looking back, her life goal in 8th grade was to act on Broadway and her major upon entering college was journalism (both passions that are being partly fulfilled with the creation of this podcast), but through the exceptional and caring mentorship of Mr. Spain in high school, and then Drs. Matson, Jaremko, Chirico, Christoff, Barrios, and Barlow (Yes, it does take a village, people!) through college to graduate school and fellowship, Anne Marie found her true calling while earning a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, confronting her fears, becoming an amazingly happy working spouse and step-parent to two beautiful and loving girls, and finding enormous enjoyment in getting on stages at professional conferences to talk about her work, tell lots of stories, and travel far and wide in the process.

She is most grateful to the many, many patients and families that she’s worked with and learned so much from over the years, and does not take lightly the trust that parents and patients have put in her in working together. And, Anne Marie’s mom and dad are enormously proud and happy not to have to block her path anymore as that is tough to do in your 80’s.