Moving to New York City in 1979, Ms. Werner became Music Director and Conductor of the Pro Solisti Chamber Orchestra in 1980, and from 1982 to 1984 she served as Assistant Conductor of the Metropolitan Y Orchestra of West Orange, New Jersey. She subsequently held the position of Music Director and Conductor of the Manhattan Opera Association from 1985 until 1988, when she was appointed Music Director and Conductor of the Rockaway-Five Towns Symphony for a two-year period. The same year she founded the Philharmonia Orchestra of New York of which she has been Music Director and Conductor ever since. In June 1998 she was named Music Director/Conductor of the New York Symphonic Arts Ensemble.

Active as a guest conductor, Ms. Werner has appeared repeatedly with the Fort Collins Symphony in Colorado, Opera Amici in Manhattan, and the New York Symphonic Arts Ensemble, as well as with the Long Island Opera Company and the Greenwich Village Orchestra. She made her European conducting debut in 1994, leading the Czestochowa State Philharmonic and the Kalisz Symphony in Poland. She has returned to the country in 1996 for concerts with the orchestras of Koszalin, Plock, Bialystok, Torun, Walbrzych, and Kielce. In April of 1997 she appeared with the Poznan Philharmonic and also recorded works of the American composer Roger Nortman with this orchestra. In November of 1998 German State Television aired a 45-minute biographical documentary about Ms. Werner which was filmed in New York, in Germany, and during a recent guest appearance with Sinfonietta Cracovia in Cracow.