Episode 36: Tuned to Serve—Wendy Muston on Arts Advocacy and Community Leadership

In this insightful episode, CEO Sarah Hempstead sits down with Wendy Muston—concert harpist and former school board president—for a conversation about leadership, service, and the lasting impact of the arts in education.

With a career that spans international concert halls and 25 years of public service in The Metropolitan School District of Lawrence Township, Wendy shares how her experiences as a musician shaped her leadership style and fueled her advocacy for equitable arts education. From navigating challenges on stage to leading through a pandemic, her story is one of resilience, integrity, and a deep commitment to community.

Listeners will hear about:

• Developing a music career with adaptability and purpose
• Leading without a personal agenda—and why that matters
• Advocating for early instrumental education as a foundation for equity
• Drawing leadership lessons from orchestral collaboration

This episode is a powerful reminder that creative disciplines can build the skills leaders need most: empathy, collaboration and the ability to listen with intent.

🔗 Subscribe and follow us at @SchmidtAssociates on LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.

Transcript

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Sarah Hempstead: [00:00:00] Welcome to Luminate, navigating the Unknown Through Creative Leadership. I'm Sarah Hempstead, Principal-in-Charge, and CEO at Schmidt Associates. Today's guest has spent her life creating harmony in more ways than one. Wendy Munson is a concert harpist whose career has taken her to stages around the world from the Lincoln Center to European tours, but her influence extends far beyond music.

For 25 years, she has served the Metropolitan School District of Lawrence Township. Including 12 years on the school board, two as the president where she championed equitable arts education and worked closely with Schmidt Associates to shape spaces for student success. We're gonna talk about the rhythms of her music career, the leadership lessons from her time on the school board, and how both worlds taught her about listening, collaboration, and creating something greater than yourself.

Welcome, Wendy.

Wendy Muston: Thank you, Sarah, for having me.

Sarah Hempstead: I'm so excited to have you here today. Let's start at, I guess, start at the very beginning. Tell me when music first became a part of your life, [00:01:00] 

Wendy Muston: That would be when music became a part of your life, Sarah, that would be the heartbeat of your mother that you first heard in utero.

And that would be as you were born, that would be the lullabies. She no doubt sang to you. Do you remember a few of those lullabies? I, I do. I sang them to my daughters. You'll never forget, right? Music is a part of our lives. I grew up in the sixties, so it was on the radio, on television. You know the Andy Griffith scene?

Oh yeah. Theme song. We know the theme songs of those TV shows we watched when we were kids. We know classical music. Elmer FD and Bugs Bunny. I'm gonna get that rabbit. You know the ride of ies, right? That's right. That is how I know 

Sarah Hempstead: that song, 

Wendy Muston: right? It's exactly. I was in a room with parents and community members as we dedicated one of our arts schools and about a hundred people there, and I asked them, raise your hand if you've ever learned the alphabet.[00:02:00] 

They looked at me strangely. I said, really, please raise your hand if you've ever learned that. Every hand went up. I said, now keep your hand up if you learn the alphabet without the music. Almost every hand came down. Our mother goose rhymes our, the songs we use to learn. So music is a part of our lives from the very beginning.

Absolutely. Um, so then when did. Your formal education in music. Start my formal education in music. I would say started when I was three and I went, I had dance lessons. My mother put us in dance lessons. I think she thought we were little Shirley Temple, my sister and myself. My mom was a single mom and evidently she wanted to be Shirley Temple and she thought we should be too.

So until I was about seven years old every day of my life. I presented with, um, banana curls. My hair were, was rolled in sponge curlers every night. I'm imagining that right now. And just so you know. So cute. That was [00:03:00] so cute. So cute darling. So cute. So weird. But, um, she put us in dance lessons when we were three years old, so I developed a really strong sense of rhythm in my body.

Mm-hmm. From that. And then I grew up with my mother, my sister. My grandparents, my grandmother and grandfather. So it was a multi-generational home. My grandmother loved to play the organ. She was good at that. So we had a spinned organ in the house. So at five years old, I started taking organ lessons and my organ teacher could not read bass cleft.

He could only read treble cleft. Oh, that's interesting. So he taught us to play off what you, we would call lead sheets. You'd have the melody written out in treble cle, and then you'd have chord symbols above the staff. And as a five-year-old, you know, I had to make up my own baseline. You know, a lot of it was kind of boom check, boom check with the foot pedal and the, and the left hand.

But [00:04:00] it was a great foundation for what I would experience later when I did learn the base clef and started seeing arpeggios on the page. I didn't just see notes flying across the page, but I saw them in chords. Can you describe a spin in organ for people who've never seen one? Oh, sure. It's an organ you'd have in your home, and it has two keyboards.

It has an upper keyboard and a lower keyboard, and then it has about a two ve range of pedals underneath. Um, so you're playing with your feet and on two levels of you're playing. Yeah. So you're playing on, you're, you're playing with right hand, left hand. Okay. And your feet. Which interestingly enough, when I was, uh, about 10 years old and started playing the harp, um, is what I experienced with the harp because the harp, you know, has a treble line mostly played by the right hand.

Mm-hmm. A baseline played by the left hand and seven pedals underneath that your feet work. Each pedal has three different positions. Are you following me, [00:05:00] Eric Uhhuh. If you look at a musical scale, there are seven degrees of a musical scale. Mm-hmm. They're named alphabetically. I won't sing the song, but they're named C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C, right?

That's a C scale, seven unique notes, and there's a C pedal, A D, E, et cetera. There's seven unique pedals. When the pedals are in their upper position, all of those notes are flat, so all I have to, all I have represented on the harp are the white keys. Okay? If you can imagine that on the keyboard. Then I have a C pedal, and if that C pedal is up, all the Cs on my heart are flat.

Same with the rest. So if all the pedals are up, I'm in the key of C flat. And for those strange music people out there like me, that's equivalent to the key of B on the piano. But if I put the harp in the key of B, I actually have E natural, B natural, and everything else in sharp, [00:06:00] and I play it on different strings.

I had no idea 

Sarah Hempstead: that's there. I had no idea that there were petals on a harp. I'm embarrassed to say, or that they would change the, change the key like that. Yeah. That's so interesting. Yeah. So how do you get to I, I think I had no idea because going to play a harp was not an available activity to me in my little tiny hometown.

How did you get from an organ to a heart? A little 

Wendy Muston: tiny hometown has a great story. They're. Director of music at their schools. I grew up in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and Adolf Sidle was an immigrant from Austria, and he was the director of music for our schools there. Interestingly, a town of about 70,000 people, so the school system there was about the size of Lords Township schools here.

Right. We had two high schools. I think three middle schools and several elementary schools. His daughter Louise, was a beautiful [00:07:00] fine harvest. Louise had had Scarlet Fever as a child, and as she grew, she developed rheumatoid arthritis and went to the Mayo Clinic where they asked her, would you like your hands wired to write, or would you like your hands wired to play the harp?

She had them wired to play the heart. By the time I studied with, her hands were so incredibly crippled she could no longer play the heart. Friends of Louise, by this time Adolf Sidle was, was no longer with us, but it was Mr. Hamilton and he was the director of music and he thought to keep Louise in work.

He would put a harp in every school and a pedal harp in each high school. And one day, Mr. Bordes, who was a horn player in the Omaha Symphony and a teacher in our school's [00:08:00] music teacher, came into my sister's classroom, I think fourth or fifth grade classroom, and said, who wants to play the harp? And every hand went up and he said, I'll pick you, you, you, and you.

And my sister was one of the. Children, he chose, it says an older sister. It's an older, she's two years older. Okay. All right. So you're watching her get to play the harp. Right. And she became somewhat good at it and was encouraged to do more. And my mother, single mother, but she purchased a, a small harp for my sister and I couldn't keep my hands off of it.

I knew the keyboard, I could make up songs on it. Mm-hmm. And so soon after, I was afforded lessons as well. 

Sarah Hempstead: So, I mean your, your mother. That is a remarkable story. And your mother sounds like a pretty remarkable person too, that she saw that passion and was willing to jump in and indulge it and say, yes, let's go play the harp.

Why 

Wendy Muston: would we not? Absolutely. And then we got a pedal [00:09:00] harp, and when my sister began playing jobs in high school and going out with a pedal harp, she bought another pedal harp so that I could have a harp to use. Right. And. You know what? She was pretty remarkable. She, I look back on it now, I didn't realize it at the time, but she had, my parents were divorced when I was a baby, but she went out and got her associate's degree and she started working for Union Pacific Railroad in their computer programming division and.

When, uh, so this was the early sixties. Just say she was probably the only woman. She was Ground floor. Yeah. There weren't, there weren't very many people in that division. I remember the doors were locked tight, you know, one of the few places where I experienced you had to have a special key to get in to the room.

The room was very hot because they were old, maybe seven foot high modules. Some people will remember them and they had huge disks on either side and the sound they would make as they worked. And there [00:10:00] were many of them in the same room and it was very warm in that room. So, you know, they had the air conditioning turned way, way, way down.

And when we would walk in the room, somebody had programmed to play.

I've been working right. For us, you know, they thought that was really clever, really fun. I mean, it is pretty clever. It's pretty clever. And, you know, I understand now who she was and what she was doing there, and it was pretty incredible that she had that skill and that talent. This was 19 62, 63, 64, you know, and she, she grew along the way as computer programming grew and learned all the languages.

And did she play music? She played the piano a little bit. Mm-hmm. But not very much. 

Sarah Hempstead: It, it's an interest, the math base of music and of programming. I mean, we often find many of our engineers, many of our architects, they also play music and it's just [00:11:00] so closely correlated that, that foundational 

Wendy Muston: Oh, absolutely.

You know, you can teach a child, there are four beats in a measure. This, this color note gets a. One beat this note gets two beats. This one, you know, there are four beats and you can add 'em up however you want and do the rhythms however you want. And then they get in third grade D fractions and they say duh.

Right. 

Sarah Hempstead: It makes total sense. 

Wendy Muston: Yeah. 

Sarah Hempstead: Right. Huh? So when did you know, um, and maybe it was more a progression than a moment that this was something you wanted to do. For your career? 

Wendy Muston: It was absolutely a progression. I had no intention of being a musician, none whatsoever. My aptitude test said I should be teda an architect.

Oh, well, let's say frozen music. That's a yes, that's right. Or a mechanic. It was that one or the other. It was an, it was an architect or a mechanic. Sure. Yeah. And I thought I might be an attorney. Um, but I just kept playing music. It was satisfying. I loved it. I enjoyed it. So as time went on. [00:12:00] My father lived in Indiana when I was ready to go to college, and he kept telling me what a great music school I had, just the best in the world, the best.

You know, Jacob's was the best. It wasn't Jacob's then, but it was the best music school in the country. I auditioned, you know, you can do your undergrad in anything and then make a decision. Sure. You know, so I just auditioned and lo and behold I, I won my place and in the student roster. Studied with Peter Eagle, who was a perfect match for me at the time.

Finished my degree with Suzanne McDonald, moved to Indianapolis and I was offered a job playing six nights a week in Sunday brunch at the Martin House. When the Martin House was owned by Jim Martin. It was across the street from. St. Vincent's Hospital. Yep. And at the time, this was 85 ish, at the time, it was the only game on the north side of town.

Sure. For, for a nice dinner and you know, hotels. So that lasted for, I don't know, two or three, four years. And during that [00:13:00] time, I was recruited to go out touring with Johnny Mathis. We played for Gladys Knight, we played for Josh Groin. We played for so many entertainers. Somewhere along the way, I just sort of just realized I had become a professional musician.

Sarah Hempstead: Okay. Wait, you say we played Who's the we and we played for my colleagues and I. Okay. 

Wendy Muston: And there was a gentleman named Al Coine, if you've ever heard the Pink Panther. Dun. Um, that's Al Coine played the Berry Saxon with, uh, Mancini, but he also recruited the orchestras that would travel throughout the Midwest with Henry Manni.

Because he could recruit not just musicians from Indianapolis, but the remarkable talent that existed in Bloomington and the Indiana orchestras became famous with traveling stars for [00:14:00] being the best orchestras in the country. That's how I got my start doing the traveling work. That's so interesting. So you were 

Sarah Hempstead: playing with them 

Wendy Muston: on their Henry Mancini you were playing with?

Well, yeah. Well, I didn't, I didn't actually play the Henry Mancini, but I played a Henry Mancini medley with Johnny Mathis. That's why Johnny Mathis chose to, to ask Al Coine to hire his orchestras for him, because Henry Mancini said, oh, Johnny, you gotta, you gotta get to see this orchestra out here. Right.

Um, and so, and so 

Sarah Hempstead: accidentally, you're, you're a professional musician. A It was totally, it was totally an accident. 

Wendy Muston: And then I, you know, and then I, I was playing with the Peoria Symphony. I was driving there, I was playing with the Illinois Chamber Orchestra and the Springfield Symphony. And as I was playing for the Springfield Symphony with Ken Kiesler, um.

He was good friends with John Nelson, who conducted the ISO and John Nelson said, you know, our second [00:15:00] harvest is retiring and we've got this, we've got this European tour coming up. I don't know what to do. And, and Ken said, call Wendy. She lives there. And that's when I, you know, def facto became the second harvest in the Indianapolis Symphony.

My first gig with them was playing Symphony. Fantastic. Which is. One of the more difficult pieces on the Har Symphony. Fantastic. With Diane Evans as principal. Oh, wow. And touring, you know, the European cities. What a fantastic opportunity. 

Sarah Hempstead: Um, so eventually became First Harvest. Yes. 

Wendy Muston: Well, I'm, I was always principal, a principal harvest in the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, and I continued to be Second Harvest all these years with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra.

And Diane retired in 2022. 

Sarah Hempstead: Mm-hmm. 

Wendy Muston: And. At the time, they didn't have a named music director. So, um, the rules required that the music director be present to audition a principal position. So they, they asked me to just fill in for a couple of years [00:16:00] until that transition would happen. And so that was sort of the cherry on the top.

That was a great way for me to. Kind of, and my service with the Indianapolis Symphony. It was fantastic. 

Sarah Hempstead: So as you grew in your career and became a principal, harpist, had that change your view of leadership working with musicians from a different point of view? 

Wendy Muston: I, I don't know. It wasn't really a change in my idea of leadership.

It again, it evolved, but I will say. That when you work with fellow musicians, you must listen so carefully to each other. And for instance, if you're in a chamber group and you don't have a conductor, you have to know how to say, we're not in sync right here. Let's play these notes together and see how they fall, as opposed to, you continue to play outta tune and you're driving me crazy.

Okay. Because interestingly enough, sometimes you find out it's not the other play. Right. Right. Uh, and similarly with rhythm and things that you work out, things that you work out with other [00:17:00] players. Fine musicians tend to have a bit of an ego necessarily, and you don't wanna bruise that while you're creating the product.

And then in orchestra, you must watch the conductor. The conductor, you, we, we work with the conductor's vision and also the conductor's skill at keeping us all together. So in a large orchestra, there's about 80 people. 80 people that have been through a similar life story as my own. 80 people who have their own idea about how the music should go.

Alright. Right. But 80 people that must agree to watch the conductor and some conductors are better than others at the vision and some conductors are better than others at the technical aspects of conveying that MI mission with just their bodies. Mm-hmm. Um, some may not have either, in which case you just listen to each other and shut your eyes.

But that doesn't happen very often in a professional orchestra. Right? [00:18:00] But what can happen is there can be a little bit different interpretation of what the conductor is conveying technically in terms of rhythm or volume, and sitting in the middle of the orchestra, as I did. I have the woodwinds to my left and the percussion behind me and the strings in front of me.

And they may all have a little bit of a different vision created by whatever, by their own vision, by some looking, some, not looking at the conductor, some what, whatever it is. And you have to feel that nuance and decide exactly who you're going to be with. Because hell or high water it, the ensemble needs to sound as one.

Mm-hmm. So if the conductor's conducting one thing and everyone else is playing something else, I'm [00:19:00] going with the orchestra. Mm-hmm. Right. If you know as much as, as one, can you try to stay with the conductor? Hopefully someone will stay with you as you stay with the conductor. Um, your eyes may drift down to look at the music.

You may miss something, but the, the sound around you will inform you. So it's nuance upon nuance, upon nuance, upon nuance. It's, somebody said to me one time, gee, you're lucky you play music. And that's just like the most solitary thing. You just practice all day. And I thought nothing can demand more of you socially than playing in an 80 piece orchestra.

Sarah Hempstead: Well, and. A couple things you said there are so intriguing from a, how do you translate that to really interactions with in every day? One is the constant flexibility along with the listening. Like the, as you talk about playing the music you're navigating, constantly changing just a little bit. Just a little bit here, there.

And, uh, [00:20:00] that, that's really hard to do. It's 

Wendy Muston: really hard to do. And anybody who has ever raised a tween or a teenager knows this right. You're navigating, you're navigating from a place where you have been the leader and they have been the follower to a place where they want to be the leader, but you're still the leader to a place where, you know, you let them have some adult autonomy.

And those are difficult changes to make, aren't they? Well, 

Sarah Hempstead: they absolutely are. And, and it goes to the point about ego as well, which I think is, I could specifically talk about artists and and architects, and you gotta have a little bit of ego to put something out in the world. Absolutely. And enough, enough self-reflection and respect for other people to be able to listen.

Mm-hmm. And make a change if you, if, if a change is appropriate or somebody has a better idea, it's, and navigating with teenagers, you gotta do the exact same thing actually. That's right. That's right. So, um, so what made you passionate enough [00:21:00] about education then to. Add school board and educational involvement as a critical part of your life for for 20 years.

'cause it's a busy schedule. You're a traveling musician, you have children. It's not like you just had hours you were hoping to fill. 

Wendy Muston: And some people would think we had hours we were hoping to fill because they only see us playing on the weekends, but actually there's hours and hours and hours of practice at home.

Mm-hmm. To be able to come prepared to your rehearsal. Mm-hmm. And then there's hours of rehearsal time and so it's a, it is a full-time career. Right. But, uh, you know, I think I do remember, I believe it was in second grade, I had a teacher. That said, pretend you are president of the United States and there's only one thing you can do.

What's that one thing you wanna do? And I had a very lovely school, a very lovely education, and I remember saying if I, and I think we had just had, we had just studied the topic of [00:22:00] people in America who might not be quite as lucky. So people who needed a lot more than we needed, and I. I said, you know, if there's one thing I could do in the world, I would make sure that everybody had a good education.

That's the one thing I do, and I remember that from my childhood. How many things do we remember from my child? I remember being choked up about it as a child move on several, many years. I had my children late in life and several, many years, and my children had the opportunity to go to Lawrence Township Schools in the Spanish immersion program, K 12, and I just adored.

What they were learning there. They came home, one of 'em came home from their first day of school and, um, she said, my teacher thinks I speak Spanish. I said, really? But they, you know, the way they taught the children from the earliest age, and now it starts in pre-K mm-hmm. From the earliest age, just by speaking the language and the kids pick it up [00:23:00] so quickly.

So quickly that I was still reading them, the Spanish version of Clifford, the big red dog, they were in the tub together, so they were little right in the bathtub getting ready for bed. And I, the, the youngest one said, mommy, do you want me to read that for you? So, yeah, so, and that, that transition happens fast.

I was so grateful. This their school experience was outstanding. Outstanding teachers, outstanding leaders in the school system. And of course, you know, I became the bulletin board mom. Right. Well some, yeah, of course. That makes sense. Sure. The bulletin board, mom, and then, you know, I'm pulled into PFO conversations and pretty soon I'm standing, you know, there's still an elementary school and I'm standing in front of the, the school board saying, please make sure you don't take kindergarten out of the immersion school and put it in the early learning centers.

All the studies show that the children should be around Spanish, you know, speaking so people, so I lost one battle and won [00:24:00] a few on that. Um, but, so that was my introduction to advocating mm-hmm. To the school board, became a, a volunteer for the Scholastic Books program. Beware, because, uh, I hate to tell people this volunteering begets volunteering.

Yes, it does. So I'm done. Ask a busy person. Yep. Beware. And when this position became open, one of the school board members at the time, Kathy Berry, whom I whom I knew from the work we did at, for Glen Elementary School, asked me to be on the board. And I said, absolutely not. I don't have anything to, I don't have anything to, I can't do this.

I, I don't even know what you need. Why would you want me to do this? And. I said, you know, what you really need is, you know, you really need maybe a person of color or somebody on the board. You know, our, our student group is becoming more diverse and we just [00:25:00] need a more diverse board of education to go with that.

So she said, I think I have somebody. Well, the day before it was required that I sign up for the election. She called me and she said, they're not gonna do it. They're not gonna do it. You gotta do it. So I was literally at the Marion County election board office an hour before that closed and the last day, that's how that came about.

But the good thing about that is it really was free of agenda. I didn't have an agenda, and that's really important. Mm-hmm. Because you know, again, you have to listen to parents, you have to listen to the teachers, you have to listen to the administration, and you have to listen to the students because I can't dictate what our.

Children need. Sure. I have to listen and find out what they need. Mm-hmm. 

Sarah Hempstead: Well, you didn't have an agenda, but you did have an expertise, which is, which is the arts and how formative they can be. Right. And so you have been able to champion what that looks like at Lawrence Township, which [00:26:00] is really rare and and remarkable.

Working with lots of public schools. It is hard to heap a robust art system in place, particularly right now. 

Wendy Muston: It really is. And from the very beginning. Especially with Dr. Smith. Dr. Smith came on the board a year after I was there. And in terms of leadership decisions, that would probably be my best decision.

Along with the other four members of the board is hiring Sean Smith and um, he always advocated, and Lawrence always advocated for arts in the schools. Always has. It's a tradition in Lawrence and that has not changed. I know Schmidt Associates have been involved in. Creating some of our spaces, and it's always included.

Music spaces always included spaces for drama and spaces for the arts, for the visual arts. So at the time I came onto the school, Lawrence was spending a fair amount of money and by fair amount of money, I mean a [00:27:00] million dollars here and a million dollars there for musical instruments for, for equipment, for things.

And, but it was mostly going to our secondary schools. Mm-hmm. And mostly going to the high schools. And mostly going to the band. Which is not to say the other programs weren't funded. They really were. They really were. But I kept advocating, saying. This is great, and this is for students who already play well, and this is for our students, but there's something different about teaching preschoolers and kindergartners authentic music.

Mm-hmm. My mentor was Betty Perry. That's a long story in and of itself, but she was from New York City and. She created, uh, the Metropolitan Youth Orchestra that's connected with, uh, Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. Now, knowing that if a student would stay in classical music training from kindergarten through 12th grade, they had [00:28:00] a hundred percent graduation rate.

And little by little email by email study after study that I would send to the administration and the my fellow board members, little by little. I think they began to understand that I wasn't advocating for our younger children because I'm trying to create symphony musicians to be quite entre honest.

That is not the get rich quick scheme, you know? I think they can do better, but I know that it changes the way the neurons speak to each other in the brain. It changes the structure of the brain. It helps their executive function. They're listening skills. It helps them understand that there are long-term goals that you work toward.

Music isn't something that, um, you study and you're right and you're wrong. You, you, it's never perfect. So you come in every day and say, great, well then work on this. Well great, then work on this. Well great [00:29:00] then work on this. And you know, I finally, I looked at across the table at our administrators and Dr.

Smith and say, and asked them, did you give your children music lessons? There are several families in our district that work two, three jobs. The parents work two, three jobs. Even if they could, they don't have time to take their children to music lessons. This is a matter of equity. The kind of equity I'm talking about is an equal chance for every child to succeed, and I think they, you know.

Changing direction in a school district that went from 13,000 kids when I started to about 17,000 students is like trying to start a moving train with dental floss. It's not easy. Right? Right. So finally, we, we made that change about four years ago and offer authentic, [00:30:00] instrumental music for every preschooler and every kindergartner.

And I know that this year their achievement scores have improved 

Sarah Hempstead: so well that that's exact, that's exactly where, where my next question was gonna head you. You mentioned that a hundred percent graduation rate for MYO, but yes, their achievement rates. We've got studies that show better attendance when they get older.

We've got slightly less Better graduation rates. Overall. Better grades overall. Better math. Better math. It doesn't matter if you. It doesn't matter if you become a professional musician or artist, that was never the goal matter that you 

Wendy Muston: had music and art. Right? So I think in some ways it was helpful for me to understand that and to be immersed in those studies.

But in another way, it, it was a little detrimental because I think it could be viewed by fellow board members and staff. As [00:31:00] being my, trying to push my musical agenda. And, you know, I think we had to, I think we had to cross those rivers together and have that communication and, 

Sarah Hempstead: and it took a long time. It took 12 now, 12 years later.

Right. That here you are with music Right. For every student. Right. Which is just extraordinary. It's amazing. 

Wendy Muston: And I, you know, I would encourage anyone who wants to, to, to make an appointment and go through one of our schools and check out the music rooms in all the schools, they're, they're outstanding.

They're pretty impressive. 

Sarah Hempstead: Um, so let's talk about how your kind of worlds have intersected. So professional musician working with education in the schools. As you talk about kind of leadership lessons that you carry from both of those, talk about the crossover. What are the leadership lessons that you work on?

Work on the stage. They work in the boardroom. Well, an actual 

Wendy Muston: crossover was introducing [00:32:00] the Indianapolis Symphony Symphony Orchestra, CEO, James Johnson, to our to to Sean Smith and working with them at the time. I believe that. Community Hospitals was sponsoring our children to attend the discovery concerts of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra.

And through that, through the, through their meeting community hospitals now sponsors most of the discovery, a lot of the discovery concerts with the ISO. So that's, that's an actual, that's awesome. You know, but more than that, I think just understanding that. In an organization, you have to have someone in charge whose vision you, they can relate to you.

You understand, you believe in, and you follow that vision. You don't have to have the same ideas about how to follow that vision, and you can have conversations about that and you can agree and you can disagree, [00:33:00] but that steady, long vision is so important in any organization. And then. As a board, as a school board, of course, we were a school board of five people and for those who've not served on that kind of, in that kind of experience, each one of us has an equal voice.

You can have a title on the board or not, but each board member has an equal voice. And because we were a board of five, we could never get together with more than one other person and talk about anything that was going to come up for a vote. Right? So the open door laws, right. So I would encourage all of the board members if they had an idea that they wanted to pursue, to talk to each individual board member one-on-one, and convince them of the logic of their ideas.

And sometimes you can [00:34:00] convince people and sometimes you can't. Mm-hmm. And I, for most of my year, years on the board, we were all in sync and sometimes we weren't. I think the hardest thing is to let go. If you're in the minority, I think it's hard to let go. Yeah. But I think that with, with a healthy board and a good working board, it's possible to do that.

Most of the time we, we did really well. 

Sarah Hempstead: Yeah. From, um, from the perspective of attending many ab board meeting. For the most part, I, I would say your board seemed, has always seemed mm-hmm. Functional and totally respectful. Right. Um, and that's actually, that's pretty extraordinary too. 

Wendy Muston: Yeah. We love that. And I, and I I also think you must, oh, I'll just leave it at that.

Yeah. It, 

Sarah Hempstead: it is always presented as a board who is there to do the best they can for the children in your right. In your district. Right. And that's really, there's no higher goal than that. Right. So this. If you were [00:35:00] president and could do whatever you wanted, would your answer be the same now? Well, it 

Wendy Muston: probably, it, it would be, I think education takes on a whole new meaning, you know, as president of the United States now.

Sure. But absolutely. Uh, I, somebody told me the other day, okay. I was told I didn't read it on the internet. Everything you read on the Internet's true. Right? No. You know, some somebody in the know told me, and I didn't know this and I haven't researched it, that years ago, Costa Rican, the Costa Rican government, stopped their military spending and decided to spend it on education for their citizens and now Costa Rica.

Has the highest literacy rate of any country in the world. 

Sarah Hempstead: Is this true? The first half of what you said for sure is true. I don't know about the literacy rate, but they did indeed disband their military and fund their education system with it. 

Wendy Muston: [00:36:00] Now, I don't, I if I were president of the United States, 'cause, 'cause when I run, I want everybody to know I'm not gonna disband our military.

Okay, that's good. We're good. But I, I do think that, I do think that if we focused our attention more on education. On opening children's minds and allowing children to come into an autonomy where they feel free to express themselves. We could be healthier, solve a lot of other problems. I think so. 

Sarah Hempstead: So now new phase of life for you.

Absolutely. Off the, off the school board. You're a recovering school board member? 

Wendy Muston: I'm a recovering school board member. I did not run in the last election, so as of January 1st. Uh, after some 12 or 13 years with my kids in school and 12 years on the board, I have retired from the school board and with the selection of Claire Thai as the new principal [00:37:00] harvest of the Indianapolis Symphony, I'm no longer playing weekly concerts there.

And so I have all this free time, a lot of free time, and I. Fill it with, I decided for a year to not make any plans before I did anything else. I'm still principal harpist of the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra. Mm-hmm. Uh, and I play with them about five or six times a year in our series, concerts, fine orchestra and the schrott.

But, but, uh, during the pandemic, for instance, music stopped, came to a grinding halt. Right. And I stepped into a quilt store to buy some fabric, I think for masks or something, and walked out with a job. Um, 'cause it's hard for me to just stay still and it's something I al also are always wanted to do. And so, uh, on my free time I do some quilting.

We have a [00:38:00] little dog. I get to walk the dog every day, you know, now. And, uh, we've traveled a bit and we've traveled to Belfast for Christmas and. We traveled to Berkeley in the summer and for our 40th wedding anniversary, we just got back from Santa Fe. Congratulations, where we heard two operas and it was a spectacular visit.

So we're a little bit of traveling. My husband still works and where he does work from home, which you might think is a challenge, but it's not that much and, and a lot of hours just contemplating. Where will I land next? I, I don't think I'm completely ready to retire, but I, I also don't think that I want to spend another 12 years in a heavily volunteer position.

Sarah Hempstead: Sure. 

Wendy Muston: So I'm just not sure. 

Sarah Hempstead: I think that's wise. I think, I think the time as we've talked about your, your progression of your life. I suspect you're a person who has not spent a [00:39:00] lot of. Intentional time just saying no to assignments, to think about what you really wanna do next. Right? Like that sabbatical time.

Right. I think that's really wise. 

Wendy Muston: So, you know, musically speaking, I'm taking on more recitals, things that I didn't have time to do. Sure. I'm thinking about music that just, I want to play, not music than man tells me I have to play. Right. Yeah, you're right. So I, you know, I, I am still playing and still still in the scene.

You get to pick what you wanna do. I get to pick what I wanna pick, and you know, there will be a time because hands, arms, shoulders wear out, you know? So there will be a time, but not yet. But not 

Sarah Hempstead: now. Not yet. This has been such a delight. Thank you so much for spending the time. I, I have so many follow up questions even about like, tell me stories about the worst professional musicians you've ever played with, but we'll leave those for offline.

I do have a question I ask [00:40:00] everybody because I always want good book, good book reviews. What are you reading now? Or tell me a book that you recommend everybody reads. 

Wendy Muston: Oh gosh, what did I just finish reading? I, you know, I just recently finished reading the book, James. The book, James, I'm trying to remember the name of the author.

I'm embarrassed, I can't remember. But of course, it's the retelling of Huckleberry Finn from the eyes of James, who was, um, Jim in the book, but his slave friend. If, if that's a thing, and again, it's, it's looking at perspectives. I do love a good mystery. I could read Dorothy Sayer any day, anytime. I love a good mystery.

These days, I, what did I, I just read the author wrote the vegetarian. She's a Korean author, but it was another book, and I think it was remarkable. It [00:41:00] was about a journalist's journey into herself through the eyes and experiences of one of her friends. And included facing the truth of war crimes that happened during the, the war between the Koreas.

Yeah, she wrote the vegetarian. Well, anyway, your readers could look it up. She wrote the vegetarian look. 

Sarah Hempstead: Readers look it up and it sounds, you can go back and forth between a Dorothy Sayer mystery and then the, uh, and then the war crimes book. It is for balance 

Wendy Muston: kind of largely. I like to read a little bit of fluff these days and get my mind off, off.

Sarah Hempstead: I, I try to do one, one fluff and one serious. Mm-hmm. And just go in rotation. Thank you. Your story is such a great example of service, um, of how the arts impact everything, which, you know, here at Schmidt, we believe that too. That's where, that's where all of my folks come [00:42:00] from and some way is, uh, they had a, they had an arts teacher who impacted them, so very, very cool.

Love how music, leadership and service can play in the same key and lessons on stage, uh, how those go to leadership and life. So thank you Sarah, and I love your metaphors. Oh, it's been a delight. It's been a delight. And thank you listeners for tuning in to illuminate navigating the unknown through creative leadership.

And be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn at Schmidt Associates. And until the next time, keep navigating the unknown with creativity and confidence.