Leadership

Rich Breske has provided strategic management and marketing services to both public and private companies for over thirty-five years. He has brought outstanding vision and leadership skills both as a corporate officer and as an independent marketing tactician.

For the past ten years, Rich has provided executive planning and marketing acumen for 21st century companies through Strategic Marketing Management, LLC. Prior to opening his own firm, he served in key management roles at KHS America, Inc., the Conn-Selmer division of Steinway & Sons, Inc., and United Musical Instruments, all worldwide manufacturers and distributors. He served in the management of the SMART Foundation which provided programs and advocacy support for arts education. He has authored several publications focused on the arts and education.

Rich grew up on Chicago’s south side and attended Marist High School, where he was an active member and drum major of the school’s marching band. He attended Elmhurst College, receiving a degree in marketing and music business. His early career included time at the Chicago Symphony and Ravinia Festival organizations, as well as classes at the Chicago-Kent College of Law. Rich has served on several non-profit boards and continues to support music education as a vital component in the development of lives of today’s children.

Shana Pearson Grigsby is a creative integrated marketing leader with over 20 years of proven experience in brand building, message direction, communications, and outreach initiatives, for private sector, non-profit, and government agencies. 

Since 2007 she has served as the Vice President and Chief Strategist of Ventures Unlimited, Inc.  There, Shana helps fuel the agency’s mission of “One Idea Can Change the World.” She has successfully led client strategies for B2B marketing solutions, market research, brand development, community outreach initiatives, strategic communications, digital marketing, and multi-cultural awareness campaigns alongside the president and CEO.  

Shana helps design and execute awareness and call-to-action programs that champion the needs of underserved communities and their residents. Her leadership has helped the Ventures team break new ground for clients such as Aetna Better Health of IL, Harmony and MeridianHealth Plans, WellCare Healthcare, Heartland Health Centers, The AIDS Foundation of Chicago, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois, Cook County Department of Homeland Security, the City of Chicago RCPT, the American Bar Association, and Housing Action Illinois.

Before joining Ventures, Shana was an Account Executive at Burrell Advertising and DDB advertising agencies. In her roles, she helped manage high-profile engagement and brand campaigns for clients such as McDonald’s, Exxon Mobil, Western Union, and JCPenney. Shana also served as a Senior Associate Director in Donor Relations at The University of Chicago. She assisted in launching university-wide recognition programs, giving societies, events, and communications for the University’s first $2.38 Billion Capital Campaign.

Shana is honored to serve on the West Point School of Music (WPSOM) Board. Early in life, her parents recognized the tremendous intrinsic value music education provides. They enrolled her and her sister in orchestra and band and sacrificed to pay for private classical piano and violin lessons. She credits the experience and character skills developed as a musician as a foundational cornerstone for her success. Shana looks forward to helping WPSOM increase its awareness, support resources, advocacy, and access to benefit thousands of Chicago’s youth.

Shana earned a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

As a graduate of Howard University’s School of Communications, D‘onminique has contributed to the field of dance and community engagement in varying roles for the past 20 years as a performer, student, educator, healer, community member, arts administrator and most recently dance writer. D‘onminique has a well-rounded perspective to her approach to both artistry and community engagement.

In 2016, she was awarded the Legacy Continues award by the Katherine Dunham Museum for her commitment to sharing the importance of Miss Dunham’s manifold legacy. She has worked internationally studying traditional South African dances  as a Baldwin Artist in Residence and locally with students on the Autism Spectrum as an Adaptive Dance Assistant at the former Lou Conte Dance Studio in Chicago.

Currently, D’onminique lives on Chicago’s South Side where she works with a close knit community of teachers, artists, families and students as the Associate Director of Education and Family Programs at the Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago. She is a 2021 3Arts Making the Wave Grant Recipient, a staff writer for See Chicago Dance, a budding filmmaker, and healer who continues to find inspiration in cross-pollinating disciplines and the opportunity for people to be encouraged to bring their full experiences to an environment. She is proud to serve on the illustrious board of West Point School of Music and looks forward to exposing Chicago and the world to the brilliance, beauty and history of the steel pan drum.

Dr. Jeff Heddles is an Ashland University (B.A.1998) and National University of Health Sciences (D.C. 2001) graduate.  Jeff started and co-owned a private chiropractic practice in Chicago’s South Loop neighborhood for twenty years before retiring in 2022. As a sports medicine focused practitioner, he’s worked with professional athletes from every major sport as well as elite musical and dance artists.

Dr. Heddles learned about the West Point School of Music while exploring philanthropic opportunities with the D’Addario Foundation.  After seeing Julian and his coaches instruct firsthand, the WPSoM became a focus of Jeff’s philanthropic plan.

As one who was fortunate to have string and band instruction in his small town Ohio elementary school, he’s been motivated to help keep music programs in schools.

In his spare time, Jeff has written and performed with several local rock bands and currently plays with a cover band around Chicago. Outside of his musical and medical background, Dr. Heddles was a 3x All-American in Track and Field (hammer throw) and is heavily involved in the Epidermolysis Bullosa Research Project (a charity focused on healing an awful genetic childhood disease).

Music is a passion of Clive A. Phinn. As an accomplished musician in his own right, being a board member of West Point School of Music is a humbling experience, as music has opened up his world to endless possibilities and would love to see the same opportunities afforded students in the program.

Having been on the board for the past three years, his passion to serve in whatever capacity he will gladly raise his hand to serve.

For the past 30 years, Clive has been an Insurance Executive for some of the major insurance companies in the world. He is also the managing Partner for CAP Risk Consultants, LLC, a risk management firm.

Having started taking formal music lessons at 10 years old, Clive is an accomplished piano player, and played the Sousaphone in high school and college. He has served as musical director for several churches and choirs, and most recently was the music director of Holy Family Catholic Church.

Clive attended Augustana College majoring in Business Administration and a Minor in Music. Clive also attended the University of Iowa Law school and have received several designations during his professional career.

Clive is thrilled that two of his children were a part of WPSOM and saw first-hand how WSPOM has indelibly left a mark on students who matriculated through the program. I am happy to be a board member and to help in any way I can to help advance students through this wonderful program.

The world is in great need of music education. When student play music, it allows a part of their artistic mind to express itself, which is very important in helping to balance a child intellectually, spiritually, and emotionally.

Carlo Rotella is a writer, journalist, and scholar. His most recent book is The World Is Always Coming to
An End: Pulling Together and Apart in a Chicago Neighborhood (2019)—about South Shore, the
neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago where he grew up in the 1970s. Among the subjects that
recur in his writing are cities and city life, boxing, teaching and learning, blues, country music, crime,
fantasy and science fiction, movies, basketball, landscape, the Rust Belt, children and parents,
neighborhood, apocalyptic doomsayers, Chicago, Boston, how people get good at things, and a great
deal of violent mayhem.

His other books include  Playing in Time: Essays, Profiles, and Other True Stories (2012), Cut Time: An
Education at the Fights (2005), Good with Their Hands: Boxers, Bluesmen, and Other Characters from
the Rust Belt (2004), and October Cities: The Redevelopment of Urban Literature (1998).  With Michael
Ezra, he edited The Bittersweet Science: Fifteen Writers in the Gym, in the Corner, and at Ringside
(2017).

Carlo has been a regular contributor to the New York Times Magazine since 2007, and he has also been
an op-ed columnist for the Boston Globe (2010-2015) and commentator for WGBH FM. His work has
appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, the Washington Post Magazine, the Chicago Tribune, Boston,
DoubleTake, Slate, The Believer, The American Scholar, TriQuarterly, Critical Inquiry, American Quarterly,
the Journal of Urban History, the Journal of Popular Music Studies, and other periodicals. It has also
appeared in numerous anthologies and collections, including The Best American Essays, the Library of
America’s At the Fights: American Writers on Boxing, the U. S. State Department’s My Town: Writers on
American Cities, The Cambridge Companion to Boxing, Our Boston: Writers Celebrate the City They
Love, and Harvard’s A New Literary History of America. He is co-editor and founder of the University of
Chicago Press’s “Chicago Visions and Revisions” book series. Carlo has held Guggenheim, Howard, and
Du Bois fellowships, and U.S. State Department Speaker and Specialist grants to lecture in China and
Bosnia.  He has received the Whiting Writers Award, the L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award, The
American Scholar’s prizes for Best Essay and Best Work by a Younger Writer, and several Barney and
Bernie awards for feature writing from the Boxing Writers Association of America.

Carlo was educated at the University of Chicago Lab School, Wesleyan University, and Yale University.
He is professor of American Studies, English, and journalism at Boston College.

Dr. Camille S. Bell’s 20-year career in education began in the Rochester City School District in Rochester, NY, an urban district that serves approximately 35,000 students. Initially, Dr. Bell’s experience began with 6 years of volunteering in urban middle and high schools for Junior Achievement, Business Mentor Partnerships & College Preparatory programs which ultimately served as her inspiration for leaving Corporate America to pursue a career in urban education. Upon actualizing her dream, she worked for the next 5 years as a middle and high school teacher along with serving in various school leadership roles such as the Instructional Support Specialist, PBIS Coach and a Dean of Student Discipline before becoming an administrator.

In July 2005, after accepting Montebello’s principalship, a position that she held for 6 years, Dr. Bell enthusiastically began her work an instructional leader determined to bring their student achievement levels to the highest that they had ever been on the Maryland Schools Assessment while raising the level of accountability and daily instructional practices. She concentrated on creating a deliberate focus for children that not only targeted children needing intervention services, but accelerated learners as well. It was clear to Dr. Bell that in order for this to take place successfully, a laser focus attention needed to be placed on intensive data driven planning and instruction for each child. Moreover, her relentless refusal to accept mediocrity became interwoven in the school’s culture almost immediately and instilled into every child in the school. Hence they adopted the phrase,Excellence is the Only Option.

Dr. Bell is recognized for her ability to move student achievement, winning numerous awards and participating in several roundtable discussions with national principals, facilitated professional learning opportunities for both teachers and principals and served as one of the company’s Principal Mentors. Dr. Bell has received Mayoral Citations recognizing Montebello as a School of Excellence, a City Council President Certificate of Achievement, Outstanding Leadership Recognition from Baltimore City Public School and Edison Learning’s prestigious Double 4 & Double 5 Star Awards for obtaining both academic and/or fiscal solvency along with significant recognition from the community, parents, and staff.

Dr. Bell’s experience with hiring and supervising teachers, executive coaching, leadership development managing school budgets, developing school policies/operations and most importantly, driving school achievement has laid the foundation for her work as an Academic Consultant and Executive Coach in Priority schools. Her experience and success with school turnaround and academic reform has laid her foundation for moving systems forward.

Jack Corbin Getz is a native of Chicago. He grew up in the Austin community attending and graduating from Lane Technical High School. He later matriculated at the University of Nebraska Lincoln, College of Education.

Mr. Getz spent his early career as a public school educator in Shawnee Mission, Kansas, and also served on the faculty of the Salvation Army College for Officer Training in Chicago. Getz is a lifelong professional educator, musician, pastor and an executive level non-profit administrator. He is a published author of over fifty articles and lists a book called Praying When Prayer Doesn’t Work (iUniverse Press) among his recent achievements.

Getz is very clear about his reasons for serving on this board;I believe in the vision the Executive Director articulates in the West Point project. I also believe those who have stability in this life must not only help those who don’t, but seek out opportunities to do so. This is a wonderful way to extend hope to many disadvantaged children who can use a good dose of it.

Also an artist, his watercolor art passion has led to sales in a number of artistic genres.Mr. Getz lives in retirement in Atlanta, Georgia with his wife Barbara of almost forty years.

Sharon G. Lundstrom was,musically speaking,born In Kansas, but grew up in Chicago. After graduating from Austin High School, Sharon completed her education at Swedish-American Hospital School of Nursing and Rockford College in Rockford, Illinois. Her work as a Registered Nurse has been family and child centered. She has worked in public schools, and hospitals and medical practices. She currently works in the field of health testing and community education for a national company.

She has served with boards for The Good Shepherd Hospital Auxiliary, The Barrington Area Registered Nurses Association, the Infant Welfare Society of Illinois and in numerous schools. Community service has been her focus for many years, with a passion for guiding young people towards productive pathways.

Mr. Sturgeon received a Bachelor’s Degree in Music Education from the University of Illinois: Urbana-Champaign. While at the University of Illinois, he studiedconducting with Joseph Manfredo, Thomas Caneva, and Pete Griffin; and trombone with Elliot Chasanov and Jim Pugh. Mr. Sturgeon was a section leader in the Marching Illini trombone section for three seasons. He also directed the Orange and Blues Athletic Band (2005-2007), which was a subset of the Marching Illini with an active performing schedule for athletic events and university functions. He received a Master’s Degree in Educational Leadership from Concordia University.

Mr. Sturgeon is currently Band Director at Mundelein High School (Mundelein, IL). He leads two concert bands, two jazz ensembles, the Marching Mustangs, pep band, and show choir combo. Prior to his work in Mundelein, Mr. Sturgeon was Director of Bands for six years at Central Junior High School (Evergreen Park, Illinois). He taught three concert bands, a jazz band, and createdtheirsummer band program. Mr. Sturgeon has served as Assistant Marching Band Director at Wheeling High School, Wheeling, Illinois and also directed the Backstage Show Choir Combo at John Hersey High School in Arlington Heights, Illinois.

As a trombonist, Mr. Sturgeon is a member of the Northshore Concert Band under the direction of Mallory Thompson and Dan Farris. Mr. Sturgeon is an active arranger, composer, clinician, and adjudicator for several Chicagoland area high school and junior high bands. He is a guest conductor for the University of Illinois Basketball Band.