Joe Giles is founder and dean emeritus of the Tennessee Arts Academy and former director of the Tennessee Department of Education Arts Education Program. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music education from Austin Peay State University and has done additional study at Peabody College, Middle Tennessee State University, and Fisk University. Giles is past president of the Southern Division of the National Association for Music Education (NAfME) and of the National Council of State Supervisors of Music. He taught music in Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools for twenty-two years, has taken choral groups on concert tours in Europe, and has received gold and silver medals in international music festivals. Giles is the 2011 recipient of TAA’s Lifetime Achievement Award, which was renamed the Joe W. Giles Lifetime Achievement Award in his honor that same year. TAA participants fondly remember Giles’s annual “Thoughts for the Journey” messages he imparted at the conclusion of the TAA Summer Institute that always inspired and challenged each person in attendance to live their calling to the fullest.