Join the Only Country Music Celebrity Ski Event—Country In The Rockies!

Country in the Rockies was founded by Frances Williams Preston, former president and CEO of BMI and current president of the T.J. Martell Foundation board of directors.

About Frances Preston
from The Country Music Hall of Fame:

"Because of her contacts and all-around ability, [Preston] was hired in 1958 by Judge Robert J. Burton to open a Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) southern regional office in Nashville, to license performing rights for songwriters and music publishers. Quickly she led BMI to a position of preeminence in the South, signing and helping countless country writers and publishers and those with roots in other idioms of popular music as well. Behind the scenes she played a major role in building the strength of Nashville as a music center.

"In 1964, the year the Nashville BMI Building opened on Music Row, Preston became a vice president of BMI—reportedly, the first woman corporate executive in Tennessee. Preston moved to BMI's New York office in 1985, becoming senior vice president for performing rights, and president and CEO the following year. She has been responsible for the company's growth in a variety of areas, including domestic licensing, foreign performing rights, legislation for fair compensation for writers and publishers, and copyright protection.

"Nationally prominent in business and political circles, Preston served on President Jimmy Carter's Panama Canal Study Committee, the commission for the White House Record Library, and Vice President Albert Gore Jr.'s National Information Infrastructure Advisory Council.

"In 1992, in recognition of her significant role in building Nashville's music industry, she was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame." —Burt Korall

In 1993, The Frances Williams Preston Laboratories were established at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville, Tennessee in honor of Frances Preston. The vital dollars raised from Country in the Rockies goes to innovative research at the Frances Williams Preston Laboratories at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center.