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Summit Sessions + Speakers

A Framework for 
Values-Based leadership>
 
Kristin Sosnowsky
Interim Dean, College of Music
+ Dramatic Arts
Louisiana State University
Learn More
Leadership YOU! > 
Dr. Nicole Robinson
Founder + CEO,
Cultural Connections By Design
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Self-Awareness:
The First Step on the 
Road to Leadership
+ Blue Ocean Strategy: Connecting Strategy to Mission >

Gwyn Richards
David Henry Jacobs
Bicentennial Dean Emeritus,
Jacobs School of Music,
Indiana University
Learn More
Run It Like A Business:
For-Profit Ideas for a
Post-Pandemic Nonprofit World >
 
Aubrey Bergaur
Writer & Speaker on the
Business Side of Arts and Culture
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Negotiating with confidence> 

Dr. Greg Boller
Interim Dean,
Fogelman College of Business,
University of Memphis
Learn More

Put On Your
Own Oxygen Mask
First: How Leaders Can
Build Resilience for Themselves and Promote Self-Care for their Teams >
 

Dr. Laura Shultz
Senior Director of Behavioral
Health foBonheuratory Care,
Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare
Learn More

Be a Better Manager:
Start with the Basics >
 

Jeanne Gray Carr
Leadership & Team Consultant
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Strategic Finances > 
Coming Soon
Learn More
The WHY Around D.E.I. > 

Dr. Kristen Jones
Associate Professor,
Department of Management,
University of Memphis
Learn More

Leadership and Team Dynamics > 

Pamela Pyle
Artistic director,
New Mexico Chamber Festival
Learn More

Leadership and Team Dynamics > 

Dr. Richard White
Bestselling author and
Founder, RawTuba Foundation
Learn More

Leadership and Team Dynamics > 
Dr. Kevin Sanders
Director, Rudi E. Scheidt
School of Music,
University of Memphis
Learn More

Speakers

Kristin Sosnowsky

A Framework for Values-Based Leadership
This workshop will focus on "values-based leadership," where attendees will discuss the values that drive their leadership style and develop professional goals based on these discussions.

Kristin Sosnowsky serves as the Interim Dean of the Louisiana State University College of Music and Dramatic Arts and the Chair of the School of Theatre. She oversees Swine Palace, the School's affiliated Equity Theatre Company. During her tenure at LSU, she produced over 40 major professional productions, including "The Heidi Chronicles," which was performed at the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre and Beijing Central Academy of Drama; the world premiere of "Cocktail," which was one of 36 productions selected to represent the United States at the 2011 Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space, and the world premiere of "Spill," a multi-media theatre event based on the impact of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Ms. Sosnowsky is a member of the National Association of Schools of Theatre Commission on Accreditation, serves on the Board of the University Resident Theatre Association, and Co-Director of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education Leadership Institute. 


Nicole Robinson

Leadership YOU!

As the diversity landscape changes rapidly, many "best" and most influential arts-based organizational leaders struggle to cultivate belongingness and create an equity-centered organization. The challenge many arts leaders encounter is not understanding "why" change work is essential but rather "what" work is necessary and "how" one should implement the change process. Effective organizational change begins with one person -YOU! Leadership YOU! explores the essential characteristics and qualities of an equity-centered leader. Additionally, this session will explore pragmatic ways to implement equity-centered frames into practice. Finally, this fun-packed session uses CCBD's proprietary metric of Intersectionality game to explore ways to leverage personal and professional power to remove barriers, open access, and create cultural change on behalf of others.

Before launching her company in September 2018, Dr. Nicole R. Robinson was the Associate Vice President for Equity and Diversity and Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs Leadership Fellow at the University of Utah (Salt Lake City, UT). Before this role, she was the Beverley Taylor Sorenson Presidential Endowed Professor of Music Education (University of Utah). She also served on the music education faculty at the University of Memphis, Syracuse University, and Virginia Commonwealth University throughout her 22+ year academic career. Dr. Robinson founded Cultural Connections by Design (CCBD) to support organizations in establishing equity-centered processes and implementing best practices to shift the organizational culture towards a culture of belonging –accepting values and leveraging the strengths among differences. Drawing from her extensive educational background, Dr. Robinson understands that for transformation to occur, learning about diversity, equity and inclusion had to evolve from a "training" process to an "educational" process. Using her knowledge about teaching and learning and her creativity as a music educator, Dr. Robinson can navigate the complexities of the cultural landscape using creative, innovative, and "out of the box" techniques that make her approach like no other. Her proprietary, technology-infused "games," Matrix of Intersectionality, and impact are the cornerstones of her work. Although she initially crafted these learning tools for her classroom, 
 
The demand for these "games" and her sessions was requested at colleges and universities nationwide, soon extending to national and global corporations. Since the company's inception four years ago, CCBD has worked with approximately 90 organizations and presented more than 950 professional development sessions, workshops, and consulting services to academic institutions, healthcare organizations, government agencies, nonprofits, and corporations across the United States, Canada, and abroad. Dr. Robinson is a nationally acclaimed educator, scholar, speaker, and author who has presented her research at numerous national and international conferences, published articles in several industry-leading research journals and co-authored three academic textbooks. Dr. Robinson holds B.M.E. and M.M. degrees in Music Education from North Carolina Central University, Durham, NC, and a Ph.D. from Florida State University in Music Education. She started her career as an elementary and middle school music teacher in Durham Public Schools and Chapel-Hill Carrboro Schools in North Carolina.


Gwyn Richards

Self-Awareness: The First Step on the Road to Leadership

Some have said there are but two central questions in life - "Who are you" and "Where are you going?" The first of these is the point of departure in exploring leadership. But, of course, who we are is never a static thing. We evolve in many ways and will constantly reassess elements of our life and who we are. This is to be expected and a positive attribute of being human. As André Gide wrote in his collection of essays, "Autumn Leaves," 'A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never become a butterfly.'

We'll identify the values and attributes you most closely associate with and use the Harrison Assessment to explore the attributes you bring into the workplace and the degree to which they integrate. We'll also consider Robert Kegan's adult development theory and how it relates self-awareness to leadership. 

Blue Ocean Strategy: Connecting Strategy to Mission
Without execution, a mission is but a statement. Implementation depends on a path that is less about competing and more about creating. In this session, we will consider the principles of the Blue Ocean Strategy (Kim & Mauborgne) and apply them to your organization as we develop a strategy that sheds market competing thinking and resonates with the principles and philosophy of revenue center budgeting. 

Gwyn Richards served as David Henry Jacobs Bicentennial Dean of the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music from the end of 1999 until mid-2020. In addition, he served as Associate Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid at Jacobs from 1992. Before Indiana University, he served as Associate Dean and Associate Professor of Choral Music at the University of Southern California, as Assistant Dean of Music and Director of Choral Activities at Rice University, as Director of Choral Activities at McGill University in Montreal, and as a young music faculty member at Montana State University–Northern.


Aubrey Bergaur

"Run It Like A Business": For-Profit Ideas for a Post-Pandemic Nonprofit World

If you hate that phrase, you're not alone. But the arts are a business, a $763 billion sector whose 100,000+ organizations serve almost every county in the nation. Today, battered arts institutions are trying to reemerge from months of dark stages and galleries, rebound from one of the highest unemployment rates globally, and confront centuries of systemic discrimination. The solutions are right before our eyes, though. Volumes of data, research and case studies from the for-profit sector demonstrate how to achieve success across customer engagement, the user experience, company culture, the subscription economy, technology and media, new revenue streams, and brand relevance. Just because arts organizations are nonprofits doesn't mean we shouldn't make money; our revenue goes back to fund the mission. And it means a sustainable model is still necessary. Running arts organizations like a business isn't unwilling board speak; it's to revitalize this critical, massive economic engine and better serve the art and its consumers in the new normal ahead.

Hailed as "the Steve Jobs of classical music" (Observer) and "the Sheryl Sandberg of the symphony" (LA Review of Books), Aubrey Bergauer is known for her results-driven, customer-centric, data-obsessed pursuit of changing the narrative for the performing arts. A "dynamic administrator" with an "unquenchable drive for canny innovation" (San Francisco Chronicle), her leadership as Executive Director of the California Symphony propelled the organization to double the size of its audience and nearly quadruple the donor base.

In 2019, the side hustle became the main hustle as she moved her consulting practice full-time and has now served dozens of clients across artistic disciplines, geographies, and budgets up to $300M. Bergauer's ability to cast and communicate vision moves large teams forward. It brings stakeholders together across the institution, earning her "a reputation for coming up with great ideas and then realizing them" (San Francisco Classical Voice). Her drive to see opportunity in place of unsolvable challenges or irreversible trends produces different results than the norm, secures new revenue streams, and galvanizes audiences and donors. In addition, Bergauer builds strategic plans and organizations, leverages technology and new media to elevate and extend the brand, and prioritizes diversity and inclusion to create more robust products on stage and off.

A graduate of Rice University with degrees in Music Performance and Business, her work and leadership have been covered in national publications, including Entrepreneur, Thrive Global, Wall Street Journal, Southwest Airlines, and Symphony magazines, and she is a frequent public speaker, including TEDx, Adobe, and industry conferences inside and outside the arts.


Greg Boller

Negotiating with Confidence

Negotiation is the lifeblood of any organization or area where deal-making is essential. And most people understand that negotiation skills are crucial for managing interpersonal relationships. But have you noticed that some people are more confident about their negotiating abilities? Where does their confidence come from? Lesson one: negotiation skills are NOT inherent --you're not born with them. Negotiation skills are learned --through practice, experience, and training. Sadly, far too many training programs treat negotiation as a game, often using poker as their training model. But negotiation is not a game! It is a strenuous activity for professionally minded people that look to create value for themselves and others. Negotiation requires earnest study and practice to become proficient.

In this short program, you will learn how to do the following:

  • Understand human fear and manage its impact
  • Re-calibrate your language to diffuse conflict
  • Manage your body during a negotiation with movement and voicing
  • Bargain with both integrative and distributive methods
  • Strategically prepare for a negotiation with formal tools

Greg Boller is the Interim Dean of the Fogelman College of Business & Economics, Chair of the Department of Marketing and Supply Chain Management, and Associate Professor of Marketing. Previously, Greg was Director of MBA Programs (2005 -2009) and Department Chair (2002 -2005). He holds B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in marketing from Penn State University. In addition to marketing, his training includes psycholinguistics, rhetoric, and poetics.Greg has been at the University of Memphis since 1988 and teaches creative marketing communications, creativity & innovation, ethics, negotiation, global marketing strategy, and philosophy of science.

Greg's current research interests center on empathy, business ethics, and performance ethnography. His research has been published in the Journal of Consumer Research, The Journal of Advertising, The Journal of Business Research, the Journal of Current Issues and Research in Advertising, The Journal of Marketing Management, The Journal of Healthcare Marketing, Advances in Consumer Research and the Proceedings of the Pacific Sociological Association. In addition, his poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Neologism Poetry Journal, River Paw Press, an Anthology: Sunflowers and Death in a Consumer Culture.

Greg regularly conducts creativity, leadership, negotiation, and communications training seminars for a wide range of organizations (e.g., ALSAC/St. Jude, American Society of Breast Surgeons, AutoZone, Baptist Memorial Hospital, FedEx, Hilton Worldwide, International Paper, Southern Sun Asset Management, and Williams Sonoma) and executive development programs. He has served as an advertising consultant to the US Navy. Greg was a political research consultant to ABC News, the Foundation for National Progress, and the National Institute on Media and the Family. He was also a lobbying strategy consultant for the National Hardwood Lumber Association and Family Business First.

In addition to his academic and consulting responsibilities, Greg is an enthusiastic member of the Memphis theatre community. Greg recently served as a member of the New Moon Theatre Board of Directors, Theatre Memphis Board of Directors, and two terms as a member of the Germantown Community Theatre Board of Directors (he was Board President during the 2004 –2005 season). In addition, Greg is a Teaching Artist at Playhouse on the Square, where he teaches beginning, intermediate, and advanced adult acting and advances acting for teens. As an actor, Greg's favorite roles include John in "The Lifespan of a Fact," O'Brien in 1984, Stan in "Sweat" and C. P. Ellis in "Best of Enemies" (Circuit Playhouse), Kier in "All Saints in the Old Colony" (POTS at the Works), Claudius in "Hamlet," Titus in "Titus Andronicus," and Kent in "King Lear" (Theatre Works), Sec. McNamara and Sen. Easton in "All the Way" (Playhouse on the Square), Richard in "Richard IIIand," Stanley in "A Streetcar Named Desire" (Theatre Memphis), and Joe Keller in "All My Sons" (Germantown Community Theatre).

Greg is a published poet, avid (and eternally injured) tennis player, a struggling musician (he plays the bass guitar, rhythm guitar, didgeridoo, and the djembe), and a vegetarian cook. Greg is married and has two daughters and a granddaughter.


Laura Shultz

Put On Your Own Oxygen Mask First: How Leaders Can Build Resilience for Themselves and Promote Self-Care for their Teams

Since the pandemic, burnout has been hitting the workforce at unparalleled levels. However, leaders in all industries have the opportunity to shift this paradigm by first caring well for themselves, so they can then care well for those on their teams. This session will focus on helping leaders understand the signs of burnout and the potential consequences and how they can build resilience and promote a culture of well-being for those they lead.

Dr. Laura Shultz is a licensed clinical psychologist passionate about integrating behavioral health into medical settings. She is the Senior Director of Behavioral Health for Ambulatory Care at Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare in Memphis, Tennessee. At Methodist, Laura leads a team of embedded behavioral health providers within the outpatient adult and pediatric medical practices, collaborating with medical providers to provide more holistic care for their patients. This is the second integrated behavioral health program that Dr. Shultz has developed from scratch. Before Methodist, she integrated behavioral health services within a large federally qualified healthcare center's primary care, pediatrics, OB, and dental clinics. Her clinical specialty areas include health psychology, neuropsychology, the integration of religious faith and psychology, and trauma. She earned her Master's in Counseling at Covenant Theological Seminary and then completed her Doctorate in Psychology at Wheaton College. Next, she completed her clinical internship with a specialty in neuropsychology at the North Texas VA Healthcare System. Then she completed a specialty postdoctoral fellowship in Clinical Neuropsychology at the Memphis VA Medical Center. She is board-certified (ABPP) in clinical health psychology. When she is not geeking out over psychology, Dr. Shultz delights in being a wife and mother to her three young boys.


Jeanne Gray Carr

Start with the Basics –Be a Better Manager

It's time for a new style of management that is relevant to our times. Not only has the world changed in the last few years, but so has the nature of work, the workplace, and our people. These disruptive forces compel us to be new leaders who create a high-trust culture that can attract, retain, engage, and inspire the best people. Once on board, our people must be able and willing to collaborate and innovate in this disruptive environment. Our times require a new kind of leader able to demonstrate exemplary management skills that focus on bringing out the best in people. In Start with the Basics –Be a Better Manager, we will identify and discuss the essential management skills required to see, develop, communicate, and unleash greatness in every person! It is not a traditional workshop but rather an interactive discussion.

Jeanne Gray Carr has over 30 years of experience in executive coaching, team/peer coaching, leadership consulting, corporate human resources, and program design/facilitation. She has written 17 playbooks on a wide variety of leadership topics. In addition, Jeanne served as the CEO/president of a large regional healthcare agency for almost five years. Her focus has always been on accelerating the development of high-potential people. She has worked with organizations undergoing pandemic-related disruption, leadership changes, mergers, acquisitions, and restructuring. Her client portfolio has been global –United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Europe, South Africa, China, Singapore, and Australia. Jeanne's coaching style is based on her belief that people are the CEOs of their careers. She creates a safe environment for clients to increase their self-awareness and self-confidence. Jeanne gives "straight talk" feedback in a caring, respectful way helping clients learn. Understanding that clients' mindsets drive what they think, do, and determine, the results are foundational to her and her clients' ongoing success. Jeanne helps her clients confront workforce challenges in complex, changing business and education environments by demonstrating the value of a cohort-based, peer-centered approach to learning. Jeanne has worked with the Korn Ferry Emotional and Social Competency Inventory (ESCI) for almost 20 years. She has written an Emotional Intelligence Playbook to help clients process results and develop action learning plans. In addition, she has worked extensively with Gallup's Clifton Strengths profile and the Keirsey Temperament assessment. Jeanne's C-suite clients strongly prefer individual 360-degree interviews with customized feedback and reporting. Jeanne has worked with organizations in health care, transportation, education, arts, financial services, manufacturing, conservation, research & development, and various nonprofit organizations.


STAY TUNED!

Strategic Finances

We will discuss some of the types of challenges that many decision-makers face and how economic reasoning can help. Examples include how your budget reflects your values and impacts your mission, the art of grant writing, the role of philanthropy in your budget and donor cultivation, and how to make decisions around budget allocation. We will also emphasize wrestling with tensions between charitable motives and revenue-raising needs.


Kristen Jones

The WHY Around D.E.I.
This session will focus on tangible ways to cultivate belonging by recognizing and communicating the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Topics include recruiting talented colleagues from various identities, retention practices, increasing engagement, creating an inclusive climate, and the value diversity, equity, and inclusion bring to your organization.

Dr. Kristen Jones earned her Ph.D. from George Mason University after completing her undergraduate work at the University of Virginia. As an Associate Professor of Management at the University of Memphis, she teaches undergraduate and graduate-level courses related to human resource management and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in organizations, researches DEI topics, and mentors doctoral students. Her research program focuses on identifying and remediating the range of subtle and overt biases that unfairly disadvantage diverse employees at work, particularly women and mothers. Her work has been published in various outlets, such as the Journal of Management, Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, Harvard Business Review, and Journal of Organizational Behavior. Her research has been supported by various external sources, including AOM, APA, SIOP, and SHRM, and was recently recommended for funding from the National Science Foundation.


Pamela Pyle

Leadership and Team Dynamics

Learn how teams can improve decision-making by examining leadership approaches and their impact on team performance. During this session, you will work in assigned teams to solve a complex task under high uncertainty. Explore how teams deal with tradeoffs, conflicting goals, and dynamic information. Topics include group dynamics, leadership, negotiation, information sharing, cognitive biases, psychological safety, and communication.

Pamela Viktoria Pyle has been recognized for her interpretations of chamber music literature since Dorothy DeLay first engaged her at The Juilliard School. For nearly two decades, she served as a principal pianist in the studios of Miss DeLay and then Itzhak Perlman. This immersion in the piano and string repertoires led to collaborations with members of the Juilliard, American, Ying, and Mendelssohn String Quartets, including Joel Smirnoff, Joel Krosnick, and Daniel Avshalomov, as well as other soloists such as Robert McDuffie, Sarah Chang, Alan Harris and the Norwegian soprano Anne-Lise Berntsen. Ms. Pyle's connection to the studio of Dorothy DeLay continues in concert appearances with many of her former students, including Brian Lewis, Ittai Shapira, and Frank Almond.

As an award-winning soloist and chamber recitalist, Ms. Pyle has performed throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, Mexico, and Brazil, at venues such as Carnegie Recital Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Jordan Hall, and Wolftrap and at events such as the Lincoln Center Great Performers Series and the Casals Series in Puerto Rico. Ms. Pyle is regularly chosen as the pianist for nationally recognized summer music institutes, including the Starling-DeLay Symposium on Violin Studies at The Juilliard School, the Brian Lewis Young Artist Program in Ottawa, Kansas, the Aspen Music Festival, and the Robert McDuffie Fall Festival of Strings at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. Recent summer appearances include performances with Ida Kavafian, Steven Tenenbom, Peter Wiley, Keith Robinson, and Tara O'Conner at the Music from Angel Fire Festival in venues throughout northern New Mexico. 

Ms. Pyle is currently a Professor of Piano and Director of the Collaborative Piano Program at the University of New Mexico, where she performs regularly with her colleagues and brings in distinguished artists to enrich the listening opportunities of her community further. She has had the great honor of collaborating with inspiring chamber music luminaries, including Ronald Copes, Joseph Lin, Phillipe Quint, Laurie Carney, and Guillermo Figueroa.

She is the founder and Artistic Director of the New Mexico Chamber Music Festival, which debuted in 2013. She brings young pianists and string players worldwide for an intensive week of chamber music study and performances throughout New Mexico. To increase new performance opportunities for her UNM students, Ms. Pyle created a series called UNM Concerts in the Community, bringing classical music to non-traditional venues in the state. She continued to teach and perform in Brazil and was privileged to engage with Chinese students as a Visiting Professor at Shandong University in Weihai, China. 

Ms. Pyle began piano studies with her mother at four. She later studied with Patricia Zander at New England Conservatory, Ann Schein at the Aspen Music Festival, and Yoheved Kaplinsky, Samuel Sanders, and Jonathan Feldman at The Juilliard School. Ms. Pyle also devoted herself to chamber music at these institutions under leading exponents Eugene Lehner, Louis Krasner, Joseph Fuchs, Robert Mann, Felix Galimir, and Benjamin Zander.

Ms. Pyle's media recordings include CDs on the Albany and Prairie labels and numerous broadcasts, including programs on CBS Sunday Morning, the Charlie Rose Show, CNN, the Martha Stewart Show, National Public Radio, WGBH Boston, WNYC & WQXR New York, KHFM New Mexico, and a PBS special on Itzhak Perlman. Coverage of the 2011 Starling-DeLay Symposium on Violin Studies by the online media site violinist.com quoted N.Y. Philharmonic concertmaster Glenn Dicterow as saying that Ms. Pyle made the piano "sound like the heart of an."l." In print media, she was featured in Strad magazine in an article about collaborative pianists, which focused on the importance of a balanced partnership in musical collaborations.

Recently she appeared in the independent film, R.A.W. Tuba, centered on the life of her collaborative partner, tubist Richard White, as they perform in their duo, "Diversity Matters." As a team, the two have participated in extensive life-coaching workshops, enabling them to take their traditional collaboration through music to new arenas as leaders in the current discussions on race and gender equity.        

Ms. Pyle served as President of the UNM Faculty Senate, where she had the honor of representing the concerns and interests of the UNM Faculty for an unprecedented four terms. In this capacity, she reached out to the entire University to collaborate with members of different communities throughout the state to share the intellectual, social, and cultural breadth of the University in new ways.


Richard White

Leadership and Team Dynamics

Learn how teams can improve decision-making by examining leadership approaches and their impact on performance. During this session, you will work in assigned teams to solve a complex task under high uncertainty. Explore how teams deal with tradeoffs, conflicting goals, and dynamic information. Topics include group dynamics, leadership, negotiation, information sharing, cognitive biases, psychological safety, and communication.

Dr. Richard Antoine White, A.K.A. RawTuba, is the bestselling author of the memoir I'm Possible: A Story of Survival, a Tuba, and the Small Miracle of a Big Dream; and an inspirational speaker who has traveled the world sharing his thoughts & experiences, and the philosophies that have shaped and motivated him. In 2022, Richard launched The RawTuba Foundation--a multi-disciplinary teaching and tutoring facility for all ages, in addition to his second book, an illustrated children's book explaining diversity through the orchestra's instruments. Dr. White is a Professor of Tuba/Euphonium at The University of New Mexico, Principal Tubist of the New Mexico Philharmonic and the Santa Fe Symphony. Dr. White is also certified in Diversity and Inclusion training from Cornell University. 


Kevin Sanders

Leadership and Team Dynamics

Learn how teams can improve decision-making by examining leadership approaches and their impact on performance. During this session, you will work in assigned teams to solve a complex task under high uncertainty. Explore how teams deal with tradeoffs, conflicting goals, and dynamic information. Topics include group dynamics, leadership, negotiation, information sharing, cognitive biases, psychological safety, and communication.

Dr. Kevin Sanders currently serves as the director of the Rudi E. Scheidt School of Music at the University of Memphis, overseeing a comprehensive program that produces 300 events per year with over 80 faculty and staff, 400+ students, and a satellite campus in Jackson, TN.

As a director, Sanders led the School through a transformational time with the planning, construction, and grand opening of the Scheidt Family Performing Arts Center, an 82,000 sq. ft., $40 million facility boasting state-of-the-art recording studios, large rehearsal spaces, and a 900-seat concert hall. Under his leadership, the School has moved forward in several areas, including a substantial increase in the diversity of faculty, the founding of the School of Music alum chapter, the launch of the School's annual Blue Note magazine, and a broad expansion of the School's marketing and communications team. Sanders has also catalyzed new academic programs, including an undergraduate music therapy major, and has focused the School on modernizing the undergraduate curriculum and leveraging campus and community partnerships to provide professional opportunities for students.

Sanders has established new initiatives to expand access to music education in the community and enhance the student experience, including the Scheidt Music Extension, an after-school and evening program that allows the School of music to provide educational opportunities for music enthusiasts of all ages. In addition, the School's summer programming expanded to include adult classes and camps for elementary and popular music, which led to significant enrollment growth in its first year. Sanders also established the School's Student Success Center, a centralized office for students to receive professional advising, career services, and improved access to university resources.

A classically trained musician and former tubist, his scholarly musical interests concentrate on pedagogy. His work includes eight recordings and dozens of publications, commissions, and presentations he has given around the globe, including in the U.K., China, Brazil, Australia, and Costa Rica. He has performed on five continents with the world's finest orchestras, including the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Detroit Symphony, Macau Orchestra in China, and the Melbourne Symphony in Australia. He has also performed solo with the United States Army Orchestra in Washington, D.C. His students have been highly successful in national and international auditions, competitions, and summer festivals and hold teaching and performance positions across the U.S.

Previously, Sanders served the University of Memphis as the Dean's Fellow for Research Development, where he developed cross-campus initiatives that supported research and creative activity in the arts, and as the Associate Director for Graduate Studies and Professor of Tuba and Euphonium. Before that, he taught at the Crane School of Music at SUNY-Potsdam and the University of Arkansas-Fort Smith. Outside the University, Sanders and his business partner, Dr. Richard White, are sought-after keynote speakers represented by APB Speakers Bureau.

Sanders graduated from the Interlochen Arts Academy and holds degrees from Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music, the Juilliard School, and Michigan State University, with additional certification in diversity and inclusion from Cornell University and the Management Development Program in higher education from Harvard University.