Toni Reece: Hi there. This is Toni Reece, and welcome to the Get Inspired! Project for Berks County Living Magazine. Today I just have to be honest. I have one of my favorite people here in front of me, Keri Shultz. Welcome to the Get Inspired! Project.
Keri Shultz: Thanks for having me.
Toni: Absolutely. Keri, take a moment and tell us a little bit about yourself.
Keri: Sure. My name is Keri Shultz. Right now, I am the President for Reading Musical Foundation, which is a nonprofit music education and appreciation organization. We’re located in downtown Reading. We’ve been around for almost 90 years. The organization has been around for a very long time. I’ve been with RMF for, believe it or not, 15 of those years as of May of this year. It’s been quite the journey with Reading Musical Foundation.
I’m not from Berks County originally; I’m from York County, which is just a skip and a jump away. I went to Kutztown. I did my internship with the Performing Arts Center and the Arena, and just happened to land at Reading Musical Foundation, which really aligned a lot of my background, which is in the arts, but not music, with how I wanted to live my life working for a nonprofit organization.
For any of the listeners who might not be familiar with Reading Musical Foundation, we are the area’s leader when it comes to music scholarships. We award over $150,000 a year to Berks County students. About half of that money is based on merit, and then the other half is needs sensitive scholarships for kids who can't afford private music lessons, new instruments, experiences like Summer Music Camp.
We’re just about headed into Summer Camp season, so if any of the listeners out there have a child who loves music or might know of a child who loves music who can't afford to go away to a summer music camp, which can really be a life-changing experience for a young musician, definitely get in contact with RMF or go to our website. The scholarships are up to $500, and you can go to any summer music camp of your choice.
Toni: Fantastic. Thank you. Let’s go into the Project. What does inspiration mean to you?
Keri: Inspiration is such a big word, when you think about it. For me personally, I look at who I aspire to be and the people who are living that life. I think those are the ones who inspire me the most. When I look at that word, inspiration, I look at living your best life, and if you could figure out what is most important to you and be able to live that every day, I find people who do that to be inspiring to me.
Toni: So, for you, you define inspiration as attaining that joy, however you define your best life, really simply put.
Keri: Yeah. I think it’s more passion than anything. People who are incredibly passionate about their work, and I think just having that passion drives you to live your best life possible. I love spending time with people who are passionate about what they do. I find that those people inspire me the most.
Toni: Fantastic. So, do you know when you’re inspired, Keri?
Keri: Yeah, absolutely. There’s such a good energy. You can feel it to your core when you’re inspired by something.
Toni: How do you take that, when you find yourself around people that demonstrate that type of living, living their best life, and you find yourself inspired by that, how do you take that then and put that into practice in Berks County?
Keri: I feel like so much of who I am aligns with my work with Reading Musical Foundation. For me, I get inspired when we’re able to provide opportunities for kids and provide access for kids who wouldn’t normally have such opportunities or access. When I’m with others who either share that same passion or if I see again, just passion in their life, and it might not be towards music, but it might be towards something else — I feel like that energy is contagious. I think it’s really easy to just let yourself succumb to positive energy or negative energy. The more positive energy you can surround yourself around, the better chance you have at accomplishing your goals and doing what you set out to do that day.
Toni: Well, it’s interesting that you define inspiration as trying to live your best life and being around people that are passionate and are doing that as well to live their best. Yet, the work that you do as well, and you translate that inspiration to help children have that be part of their best life if they want the opportunity to go to a camp or to have a musical instrument or something like that, you’re giving back to them so they can live their best life, too.
Keri: Yes. The nice thing that I see with RMF the most is that when we provide those scholarships to a kid, whether it’s for private lessons, whether it’s for an instrument, whether it’s for camp, they have to in turn do something with that. I feel like it’s more of an investment. It’s more transactional when we work with students, because we are making an investment in who they are as a person, but they have to put the work in to get the full benefit of it. The real inspiration and the real gift comes on the other side of that hard work. Again, seeing that is inspiring. It just turns into this wonderful circle of the more kids we help, the more kids they help.
I think being with an organization for 15 years, we’ve seen scholarship kids graduate from the program who are now talking about setting up their own scholarship funds with their families. It is obvious how much of an impact music has made in their life, and the idea that they can give to other kids just the way that RMF is doing, it’s very inspiring.
Toni: What a cool pay it forward story.
Keri: Yes.
Toni: It really is. Who in Berks County inspires you?
Keri: I was giving some thought to this question. I imagine many nonprofit executive directors feel the same way, that when we look at our boards and when we look at our donors, they are very successful, accomplished people in Berks County. That doesn’t happen by accident, right? You don’t accidentally fall into a CEO position. It takes a lot of hard work and dedication and just a lifelong skill set to get to that point in life. I feel very grateful that every day I’m surrounded by these people who have accomplished so much and are passionate and they’re out there living their best life. For me to narrow it down to one is next to impossible.
I can tell you, when I first came into RMF, it was 2003. I started at the same time our board chair started. I started in May, and his term started July 1st. His name is Tom Work. Many people know him locally. He’s an attorney with Stevens & Lee. At that point, our scholarship program only had awards based on merit. Kids had to audition in order to get money. For the first couple years, Tom would watch as kids would come in for the auditions.
My former boss at the time and I would see on their applications that they didn’t have a private music teacher. They listed their school teacher, because that was the only teacher they had. They came in using an instrument that might have had a Zeswitz’s tag on it, so we know it was a rental instrument. Here they are, competing against kids who have had years of private lessons. They have incredible string instruments with the best possible strings on them. There was no way that they could compete.
It was at that point that we realized, “Here are these kids. They’re coming to the auditions because it’s the only way that they could take lessons is if they win, because they need that money.” The organization made probably one of the biggest shifts in its lifetime to provide need-sensitive scholarship awards. At that moment, the organization shifted from a very elitist, very, “Music is for a certain class of individuals,” to a, “Music is for everybody” approach. Being involved in that transformation was extremely inspirational in my life.
I think about 10 years, right as I took over as Executive Director, a lot of the music programs were being threatened. It was that same feeling, that music is for everybody, and it shouldn’t matter what zip code you live in. You should have a music class as part of your elementary school and middle school and high school. You should have band. You should have orchestra. You should have chorus. That drove me to a lot of the advocacy work, which is pretty much when I got involved with you, Toni, as we were trying to share that story and get that message out there. Certainly, Tom Work has been incredibly inspirational in my life, and inspirational in the long-term history and shift that RMF has taken towards that music education approach.
Toni: What would you like your legacy to be?
Keri: It’s something that I say quite often, and it has somewhat of a social equity approach to it. I’ve seen firsthand the difference that music can make in the life of a child. I was not a skilled musician. My parents tried to make me a skilled musician, but I was not. Sometimes that happens. I always go back to, you can't line up 40 fourth graders along the wall and say, “You would be a clarinet. You’re like Keri Shultz and you can't play anything.” You’ve got to get the instruments in the hands of kids and let them try. You don’t know what’s going to ignite that fire in the life of a kid.
For some things, it’s going to be music. For other kids, it’s going to be chess. It might be sports. Whatever it is, it’s okay, but it comes back to that beginning conversation about what inspires you, and coming back to passion. When I look at my legacy, I want it to be that when you look across Berks County that music is accessible for all kids. It doesn’t matter where you live. It doesn’t matter who your parents are. It doesn’t matter what color your skin is — if you want to try an instrument, if you want to learn how to sing, we’re going to make that happen for you.
Toni: You’re doing that now, aren’t you?
Keri: I think so.
Toni: Yeah.
Keri: I think so.
Toni: So, you’re living your legacy.
Keri: Yes, certainly. Again, this all revolves around music and RMF, but it’s such an important part of my life, and it’s how I see me living my best life.
Toni: Fantastic. Thank you for showing up for the Get Inspired! Project.
Keri: Thanks for having me.
