Helen Eaton

Helen Eaton has served as Settlement Music School of Philadelphia's Chief Executive Officer since 2010. One of the largest community schools of the arts in the country, Settlement has a 115-year history of arts education without barriers, providing over $2.6 million in financial aid and support every year to over 60% of its students. In Helen’s 13-year tenure, she has grown programming, diversified funding sources, strengthened the balance sheet, and championed partnerships, both locally and nationally. In 2020 Helen received one of the highest honors in the field – the Arts Education Award from the Americans for the Arts. The award recognizes transformational leadership through strategic planning, strong programming, and the engagement of partners to achieve community goals. Helen’s work at Settlement has been featured in Harvard Business Review and is a case study in Scott Anthony’s book, Eat, Sleep, Innovate: How to Make Creativity an Everyday Habit Inside Your Organization, published by Harvard Business Review Press -- both for her work in building systems of innovation at a legacy institution. In 2016 she was named one of the Top 30 Innovators by Musical America Worldwide. Speaking nationally about her work in building partnerships, Helen has presented at conferences including Innosight’s CEO Summit, Executive Leaders Radio, B.PHL Innovation Fest (Philadelphia), Americans for the Arts, National Guild for Community Arts Education, American Association of University Women, and SphinxConnect. In 2018 Settlement was named one of the top 10 music charities in the country working to preserve and expand music education and access to the musical arts by Charity Navigator blog. In 2019 Settlement completed its 10-year reaccreditation with the Accrediting Commission for Community and Precollegiate Arts Schools – an honor held only by 17 community schools of the arts around the country. Settlement’s research on the impact of an arts-integrated curriculum in pre-school programs –specifically Settlement’s Head Start Program Kaleidoscope -- has been published in premier early childhood research journals and is presented nationally by its researcher Dr. Eleanor Brown and Tarrell Davis, Executive Director of Early Childhood Programming at Settlement, for the National Endowment for the Arts, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the National Institutes of Health. Since 2012, when Helen and other music education providers launched the Philadelphia Music Alliance for Youth collaborative, the focus on service to music students and educators alike across Philadelphia has resulted in expanded collaborations and shared professional development for in-school and out-of-school time teachers. With Settlement as the lead partner, this collaborative also gave rise to the region wide PMAY Artists’ Initiative, funded by the Mellon Foundation and the Paul M. Angell Foundation, which supports students grades 5 -12 from underrepresented communities in becoming professional classical musicians. Now in its seventh year, the PMAY Artists’ Initiative is one of the leading programs in the country working to address one of the most deeply entrenched and systemic issues of inequity in the arts. Helen has served as the Vice Chair of the Board of the National Guild for Community Arts Education and currently serves on the Board of the Tompkins Community Bank. Prior to joining Settlement, Helen was President of Chicago Children’s Choir and the Dean of Programs at the Merit School of Music in Chicago. She holds a degree in Viola Performance from The Juilliard School and a Master of Arts in Music History and Theory from the University of Chicago. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, where she received a Bachelor of Arts in French.

Accessible creative arts education for all. Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging in the arts. Changing the face of classical music to reflect the diversity of our country. The belief that the very survival of classical music depends on our ability to diversify starting with the musicians up on our stages and the music they perform. Educating young people through the arts. High quality arts education. Pre-school arts integration. Creative aging.

The classical music field requires the representation of diversity at every level for continued relevance. To dismantle the systemic and pervasive barriers which have prevented students from historically excluded communities from fully engaging in the classical music field, the Philadelphia Music Alliance for Youth Artists’ Initiative since 2017, led by Settlement Music School, has been a national leader, bringing together a collective ecosystem to support these students toward careers in classical music. We do this by challenging the status quo, removing barriers, normalizing representation, and instilling confidence so our students can bring their whole selves to the field via mentorship and the coordination of a holistic support system. The graduates of our program are the leaders, performers, administrators, teachers, audiences, and donors of tomorrow, who, together, make our institutions and the musical experience stronger, more inclusive, more just and vibrant. What has distinguished our work from efforts in diversifying classical music at the collegiate and pre-professional level, is that we start with our students when they are children, as young as middle school, and we support them with all the resources they need to reach a competitive level. We know that by the time they are 17 years old and preparing for their auditions to follow their dreams of becoming classical musicians, that if they are not competitive at this point, it is almost impossible to catch up. We also know that when they reach a high level of performance that higher education institutions will offer them significant to full tuition scholarships which are so needed by almost all our students. To date our 50 alumni have been awarded more than $8 million and accepted more than $2 million in college scholarships and financial aid, making this also one of the most outstanding examples of a college access and readiness program. We have kept careful record of the experiences of our students with robust evaluation systems. We have made a long-term commitment to this work knowing that the changes will come over time. Our robust national network has developed highly organized and effective strategies that are addressing one of the most deeply entrenched and systemic issues of inequity in the arts. We are now sought after for our guidance on collective impact initiatives. Our student successes are numerous with a few of the most recent being the appointment of Na’Zir McFadden as the Assistant Conductor of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Vibha Janakiraman becoming the 2023 U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts and performing at the White House State Dinner for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Moti, and a very special student who had been in foster care for much of her life receiving a full scholarship to Syracuse University.

Arts Education, Change Management, Collective Impact Initiatives, College Access Programs, Equity in the Arts, Innovating at a Legacy Institution, Non-Proft Arts Leadership, Shared Leadership