The founders
Two distinct paths. One shared practice.
For more than twenty years, Vilma Esquivel and Patricia Vlieg have worked together across concerts, education, cultural production, research, and intercultural exchange. InHarmony.Academy grows from the dialogue between their two forms of knowledge: research and artistic practice, structure and improvisation, reflection and lived experience.
Research · music therapy · relational learning
Vilma Esquivel
Vilma Esquivel is a music therapist, classical guitarist, cultural producer, and specialist in knowledge management and intercultural mediation. Her work brings together embodied learning, music, peace studies, and the design of relational experiences for organizations, educators, facilitators, caregivers, and communities.
She trained in music therapy at The Catholic University of America and has worked across institutional, corporate, and cultural settings, including UNICEF, UNDP, Cable & Wireless, and Cable Onda. She is the founder of InHarmony.Academy and the founding president of the Panamanian Music Therapy Association, APAMU. She is also certified in HealthRHYTHMS®, Kindermusik®, and the Belbin® Methodology.
Vilma completed an MA in International Peace Studies at Soka University in Japan in 2026. Her research, From Musicking to Mediating, examined what conventional mediation training can overlook when the body, emotion, and time are not treated as sources of knowledge. From this inquiry, she developed the E-A-T relational lens and the ARTI framework.
As a visiting researcher at the Min-On Music Research Institute and through experiences including Peace Boat Voyage 123, she continues exploring how musical practice can strengthen the human capacities needed to listen, coordinate, and respond in real time.
Voice · piano · composition · intercultural practice
Patricia Vlieg
Patricia Vlieg is a Panamanian singer, pianist, composer, arranger, educator, and intercultural artist whose work connects music, cultural memory, identity, and dialogue.
A graduate of Berklee College of Music, where she received the Quincy Jones Award, the Solo and Ensemble Award, and the Professional Achievement Award, Patricia also pursued advanced vocal studies at the New England Conservatory of Music. She has performed and taught internationally across the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia.
Her musical practice is rooted in the coexistence of Latin American, Caribbean, folkloric, classical, and jazz traditions. Through recordings, concerts, teaching, and intercultural projects—including sustained cultural exchange between Panama and Japan—she has developed music as a space in which people can encounter one another without losing their own voice.
Patricia completed an MA in International Relations and Peace Studies at Soka University in Japan in 2026. Her research, Sounds of Identity, examines Panamanian folk songs as expressions of cultural memory and as pathways toward healing, imagination, and re-existence.
At InHarmony.Academy, she leads the musical and intercultural practice behind Positive Voice, Positive Piano, and the embodied experiences developed with Vilma.
Together
Research and artistic practice in conversation.
Vilma brings the relational lens, learning design, music therapy, and the capacity to translate research into structured experiences. Patricia brings the artistic, compositional, pedagogical, and intercultural practice through which those capacities can be heard, felt, and explored.
Together, they create experiences in which knowledge becomes embodied, music makes relational patterns perceptible, and people can practice new ways of listening, coordinating, and responding.
Bridges for Dialogue
Relationships continue shaping the future.
InHarmony.Academy is an educational practice of Bridges for Dialogue. The connection between the two initiatives brings research, culture, learning, and experiences of encounter into conversation.
Discover Bridges for Dialogue