Within the walls of the Goizueta Business School roam thousands of budding business professionals with big entrepreneurial and managerial dreams, as well as bright mentors with years of career experience behind them. However, that’s not all. The Goizueta community is also home to huge music enthusiasts living out their artistic passions.
Professor Emeritus Patrick S. Noonan says it best: “Hidden amid a group of pretty brilliant thinkers and doers in business, you find some creative people—people who can play and write.”
These creative spirits can be found all around—undergraduate and graduate students, professors, and faculty. Read on to learn how four of them bring color into the classroom, further enrich Emory’s campus, and inspire those around them.
Track 1: A Musician to His Core
Noonan is a modern-day Renaissance man. The many hats he dons include community activist, business consultant, professor, and musician—he has worn the latter all his life.
Noonan was immersed in music from a young age—his mom sang in a choir, he bonded with his brothers over records, he played trombone in music programs throughout school, and in 1965, he formed his first band, now known as Outer Park (in which he plays guitar), with his childhood best friends.
Even after graduating from Yale with a bachelor’s degree in engineering, Noonan felt music was his calling, so he just kept playing. He spent his 20s in Boston as a full-time musician, writing, teaching, and performing music.
“It turns out it’s kind of hard to make a living in music,” he jokes. Faced with this reality, Noonan started working at an environmental nonprofit, which led him to pursue an MBA at Yale, and later work at McKinsey and Company in New York. During this time, he realized he really enjoyed business school and decided he wanted to become a professor. He earned a PhD from Harvard and started teaching at Emory in 1993.
“So, where’s the music in all this? Well, it kind of got left behind. I was still playing the best that I could, but I had a family at that point and careers,” he says. “My self identity was still a musician. During all this time, I would tell myself, ‘I’m a musician. I just happen to be doing these other things.’”
Over the stretch of 30 years, Noonan did what he could to keep his music dreams alive—he kept playing guitar, collecting and assembling instruments, performing and recording from time to time. He also carved out a space for musicians and creatives on the Goizueta campus by starting a talent show for MBA students called The Coffee House, where he even took the stage with some of his pupils. “To be able to simultaneously embrace those two worlds was an unusual and very fun moment for me,” he says.
In his late 50s, he reached a point where he thought, “I don’t need to work anymore.” After 25 years at Emory—having taught more than 7,500 students and served as the associate dean of the MBA program—Noonan felt he had made his mark. “Playing more music was at the top of the list for why I started stepping back from my academic career.”
Although Noonan still teaches a bit, he has refocused his work to his creative pursuits. In the past five years, he has released six albums with Outer Park and a second longtime group, Laurasia, despite both bands’ members being spread across the world.
Laurasia recently celebrated its 50th anniversary with a new album and a concert in New York. Outer Park plans to drop a live album soon from a concert they performed at Emory’s Performing Arts Studio in 2022.
“My music is really rooted in the relationships I have with people. The creativity and the joy of music is always enhanced when you’re doing it with others,” Noonan says. “It’s still jarring to me to talk about some of these relationships and some of these projects having spanned a half century. Especially now that I’m making music again, I don’t feel like I’m in my late 60s. I’m able to be a lot more in touch with the person that I was when I was in my 20s.”
Track 2: Business and Law Student First, Enthusiastic Musician Everywhere in Between
Music pervades every aspect of Anthony Sciaretta’s JD/MBA25 life. “It’s a key part of who I am,” he says. “Always has been and always will be.”
Sciaretta’s passion developed at age 10 when he joined a local choir in South Florida. He went on to attend a performing arts high school, later joined a music performance organization while completing his undergrad at MIT, and can always be found on campus with at least one earbud in his ears. Even after he decided to simultaneously enroll in Emory’s graduate law and business programs, he made sure he wouldn’t lose touch with his first love: music.
His commitment manifested in joining the Emory Entertainment Alliance, a student band organization within the Law School, for which he serves as president. “The idea was to get students together who want to play music, while being a distraction from the rigors of law school, and play gigs in front of friends and have a good time doing it.”
Sciaretta found a tight-knit group of music lovers within the alliance and wanted to build similar ties with his Goizueta community. After talking with peers who expressed an interest in carving out a space for themselves as musicians, he formed the Goizueta Live Music Association (GLMA), a student organization that houses a six-member cover band, for which Sciaretta also serves as president. The initial version of the band included Sciarretta on lead guitar, Tanish Meher 25MBA and Sam Batiste 25MBA on rhythm guitar, Qazi Haq 25MBA on keyboards, Drew Wilcox 24MBA on bass guitar, and Apoorv Kumar 25MBA on drums.
The group is still in its infancy, but Sciaretta says their goal is to play at KEGS at the end of the semester, and hopefully, at some point, host a joint event with with the Emory Entertainment Alliance. At its core, Sciaretta says he just wants to provide the space and resources for fellow Goizueta students to be creative, as it can be hard to find a place to jam out (that won’t be met with noise complaints) and the equipment to do it.
“The reality is the band and the people in the band love doing what we do, because it’s an escape for us.”
Sciaretta’s business knowledge has even served him as he has presided over the two music groups. He says he has employed his finance learnings when deciding where to allocate money, as well as his marketing knowledge when it comes to getting the word out—which spans from posting on social media to writing on whiteboards in classrooms to collaborating with other student groups to put on performances.
He recalls one especially impactful memory from a concert with the Emory Entertainment Alliance. Per tradition, band members who are in their last semester are guaranteed a song of their choice on the setlist, which was the case for one of Sciaretta’s best friends, bass player Caleesha Body 23L.
“That show is always really special to me. We played a couple of songs that Caleesha wanted to play. Those are definitely the moments that you cherish on stage; the band related stuff for me is what matters.”
He hopes to create these same kinds of memories with Goizueta Live Music Association and the broader Goizueta community.
“The fact that in the infancy as an organization, we got six or seven people that immediately said, ‘Hell yes, we’re doing this’ and jumped right at the opportunity definitely says something. We have opportunities for music to be a thriving piece of what we’re doing, and I think it will only grow in the future. Music is something that’s really important to everybody. You can’t avoid it.”
Track 3: The Choir Singer
Alexa Schwartz 25BBA is no stranger to the spotlight. In fact, she has been singing all her life. As a little girl, she joined the Young People’s Chorus of New York City, with which she performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and on TV. Naturally, she attended the city’s famed performing arts school, LaGuardia, for vocals.
When it came time to chart her college path, she knew she didn’t want to go the traditional performance route. She sought a liberal arts curriculum instead where she could pursue both vocal performance and a more traditional study. She found exactly what she was looking for at Emory, as it boasts not only an incredible academic program but a rich music history. After befriending a convincing senior who spoke about his experience as a music and business double major, she decided to follow suit.
Schwartz notes that being a double major means having a long schedule and a full plate, but when it comes to music, it never feels like work.
“Other people’s breaks might be sitting in the coffee shop, but for me, I’m happiest when I’m singing. My music classes are a way to escape from school in a sense. It’s a way for me to take myself out of reality, and be like ‘I’m here singing a song from the 1500s with some of my closest friends and there are no other worries in my head right now. Just, can I get these notes right? Can I sing the rhythm? Can I sing the music?’”
As much as she enjoyed her Emory choir classes from the get-go, Schwartz wanted to also be a part of a more fun and less structured music environment. She found that missing puzzle piece when she approached the Aural Pleasure a cappella group table at the club fair, where she immediately received a warm welcome.
“I was like, ‘Wow, I want to be part of a community like this throughout my time at Emory.’” So, I auditioned. Thank goodness I got in because it has become the best community. From the first week, I knew, ‘These are going to be my friends for life,’” she says. “I miss them so much,” she added, while studying abroad for a semester in Italy.
As Schwartz has carved out a space for herself within Aural Pleasure, community leads everything she does. She took up her first executive board position as a sophomore, leading their public relations efforts. Last year, she assumed the Vice President role, where her biggest priority was “creating a safe community where everybody felt included and supported.”
There is surely no shortage of community when it comes to music at Emory. Schwartz recalls her first a cappella performance—a showcase of all eight student a cappella groups—that she didn’t think many people would show up to, only to be met with hundreds of people in attendance.
“Sometimes it’s hard to find music enthusiasts and people who can geek out with you to random songs and the chord progressions of these songs,” she says. “I felt like I was surrounded by my people. I was surrounded by people I can be myself in front of. That was a really pivotal point, especially starting at Emory, because I wasn’t sure what to expect.”
She felt this sense of belonging again at the International Competition of Collegiate A Cappella, during which Aural Pleasure performed a three-song set that ended with Imagine Dragons’s “Believer,” soloed by a graduating senior. She says the energy in the room was simply palpable.
Schwartz’s love for music has never been something she has had to hide. She says she is incredibly grateful for her business professors who have been nothing short of encouraging of her music pursuits, often attending her concerts and recitals.
“I feel like people care about both sides of me, both aspects of my life,” she says. “It makes me very happy that at the business school, it’s not always by the book, play by play. I can even bring my creative side out in the business school through projects and assignments.”
Track 4: The Jazz Saxophonist
Will Scruggs 02BBA was destined to be a musician. He grew up surrounded by music, as his mother loved to sing and his father had a passion for playing guitar.
“Music is one of those things that some people just gravitate towards really strongly, and I think I was one of those people,” Scruggs says. “When I was a little kid, I wanted to quit music and my mom wouldn’t let me, and I’m so glad because that really was my calling.”
Scruggs’s instrument of choice was the saxophone, a decision that came down to a simple statement: “I just loved the sound of it,” he says. His mom searched high and low in Johnson City, Tennessee, for a saxophone teacher. After years of training, the saxophone became Scrugg’s undeniable passion, but he questioned if it could also be his career.
“When I first came to Emory, I wanted to keep doing music, but I didn’t think that that would offer me a good career path. So I went into the business school because I really felt that I would end up in the business world somehow,” he says. “My plan originally was to have music be a secondary thing, but I just loved it so much that it really became primary in a way.”
Scruggs declared a double major in marketing and classical saxophone. At Emory, he found mentors in his jazz music professors Gary Motley and Rev. Dr. Dwight Andrews, who he has still maintained connections with today. Their teachings prompted Scruggs to seek a more in-depth jazz education, so he found a local teacher named Fareed Mahluli. “He was an incredible teacher for me and also kind of a spiritual adviser,” Scruggs says.
Emory allowed Scruggs to collaborate with Mahluli on his senior thesis, The History of the Jazz Saxophone. It was this project that gave him the vision that he could make music a career—and he fully leaned in, but his business education was never lost on him.
Scruggs said he employed his awareness of marketing to help build his brand as a musician. He recalls having a professional appearance from the very beginning, citing how his first album had a logo that matched the branding of his website.
Later, when he became a dad, it became a priority for him to be local, so he partnered with Ray’s Restaurants, managing the music for several locations over 10 years. “My business training and acumen proved to be vital there because I was really acting as a liaison between the music community, the musicians, and this larger company. It really merged these two passions.”
This crossover, along with the fulfillment Scruggs got from providing work opportunities for other musicians, inspired his next endeavor: a Jazz Art Center. Scruggs is leading a group of investors (mostly musicians) in buying a property in downtown Decatur that they plan to open in spring 2025.
“It will be more than just a jazz venue, but a place that’s going to have education and music lessons for young jazz musicians,” Scruggs says. “My idea is to create a space where musicians are valued and put first, and to bring the whole community into a collaborative experience. I really love the idea that we’re going to have beginners just starting to understand music in the same building as international talent, and having a cross pollination between them.”
While Scruggs works on building up an enriching music presence in Decatur, he recognizes all the growth the Emory music department has undergone, from the opening of The Schwartz Center a year after he graduated to the university adding an official jazz track. He smiles as he thinks back on a homecoming concert where he performed with an alumni jazz band that spanned graduates from the 70s to just a few years ago. The special moment reiterated advice he already knew: “Keep music in your life.”
“Music and other arts really speak to the human experience in a way that everyday life might not be able to, and I think any community is going to be richer if it has a presence of artists and artistic expressions,” Scruggs says. “Without art, we are destined to stay in the status quo. Art is that visionary element that helps us see a better future and see a better world.”
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