Birth of The Global Music Therapy Project

Its about music. And its about time.

It has been a splendid year for me at Harvard. I graduated last week with a Masters in Public Health concentrating in Health Care Management. While every single day was a learning process, and more than just one amazing thing happened that was life-changing, I am most proud of my initiative to drive awareness on music therapy within the student community especially within the School of Public Health (HSPH). I did this mostly through intent conversations, presentations and concerts, the most recent one being a fundraiser for music therapy in pediatric cancer featuring 43 musicians university-wide and from the community in a packed event at Harvard.

On arrival at Harvard, I founded the Musicians@HSPH Student Group which helped procure funding for events of this nature. Another lasting highlight was meeting with Michael Kaiser, President and CEO of the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, possibly the largest arts and art advocacy organization in the world. As many of you might know, the Kennedy Center IS indeed engaged in the translation of arts into action, where there is some common ground visible between the performing arts and the wonderful work that we all do, as evidence-based therapists.

The overwhelming inspiration for me nevertheless, came from a year-long concurrent fellowship at the Kennedy School of Government where I was a Fellow in Social Entrepreneurship at the Center for Public Leadership, a division invested in social transformation led by former Presidential Adviser David Gergen. In less than a year, I was featured in at least 5 press office articles, including a 2 page feature in the Harvard Public Health Review (Winter 2009). The most humbling honor was to be featured as one of 13 "Faces of the Future", in a commencement release, selected from over thousands of graduating students campus-wide.

Alas, now it is time for me to move into the real world, away from the comforts of a campus, which has been my loyal friend for the last 13 years (on and off) i.e. it's time to find a real job! Through a series of introspective exercises, I realized that it would be hard in the end for me to find the ideal job which brought together my medical, music therapy, health care management and business skills without being entrepreneurial (I still AM looking for a real job!). I decided that it was important that I invest in a career in healthcare management and pursue in a sense, a parallel mission to grow the profession of music therapy. I figured this was the best strategy to allow my in-depth training to make a difference so it does not dilute expertise, but allows specialization to the point of excellence that eventually becomes meaningful, powerful and beneficial to the world at large.

In the true spirit of public leadership that is home to the Catherine B. Reynolds Fellowship at Harvard Kennedy School, which not only funded my education but provided a real-life laboratory to grow my dreams big, I thought it wise to at least, consider a non-profit initiative that would promote the use of evidence-based music therapy throughout the world, but in ways never conceived before. I don't have the all the answers but I know I am asking the right questions. Yes, this would be my weekend job and will be a volunteer effort, but I do think that the work needs to be done.

To help me think through this process, I am joined by 6 fellow peers from Harvard (my WOW factors!) with backgrounds in medicine, psychology, diplomacy, policy, business and marketing who simply 'believe without seeing'. I only came this far because the world's best leaders in the field of music-medicine have been my long term mentors at Berklee College of Music, Boston. I trained at a Harvard Medical Associated Institution in India. And through this year, I have greatly benefited from the mentorship of a host of leaders, faculty, fellow students from Harvard including two very special people: My academic adviser Meredith Rosenthal, one of America's leading health economists and policy analysts and my mentor at the Center for Public Leadership, Billy Shore, Founder and CEO of the largest anti-hunger organization in the nation, Share Our Strength. Perhaps, we all, you included, have one thing in common - The drive to innovate a novel revolution built on solid expertise and empiricism.

I am writing this blog to seek your initial inputs, support, thoughts, criticisms, ideas and questions, so we can together, help change the world.

Its about time.