User:Mercurylanes/Maiolo draft

Alex Maiolo is a musician, writer, and health care reform advocate who lives in the Chapel Hill / Carrboro area of North Carolina. He is also a licensed insurance agent specializing in property and casualty insurance.

Music
As a guitarist, Maiolo has worked with Tim Sommer, Tara Busch, and Missy Thangs of the Love Language, among others. He plays bass guitar for the Chapel Hill neo-psychedelic band Violet Vector and the Lovely Lovelies.

He also writes about music as a senior contributor to Tape Op magazine.

Activism
Maiolo is an outspoken advocate for health care reform in the United States, particularly the issue of health insurance access for musicians and other creative professionals. He has participated in panel discussions and presented on the subject at industry conferences nationwide, including South by Southwest, CMJ Music Marathon, the SF MusicTech Summit, the Creative Chicago Expo, and the Pitchfork Music Festival.

He has been interviewed about the need for affordable health insurance options for musicians for numerous publications, including Pitchfork, Spin Magazine, the Chicago Tribune, and Crawdaddy!. He has also written op-eds on the subject for the Chicago Tribune and Billboard Magazine.

Since 2001, Maiolo has worked with the national non-profit organization Future of Music Coalition. In 2005, Maiolo and the Future of Music Coalition received a grant from the Nathan Cummings Foundation to develop the Health Insurance Navigation Tool (HINT), a free service offering musicians advice and information about their health insurance options.

On May 28, 2010, Maiolo and other Carrboro-area musicians performed in a tribute concert remembering recently deceased Big Star lead singer Alex Chilton. Because Chilton was uninsured at the time of his death, Chilton's widow opted to donate the proceeds of the concert to HINT.