Dr. Ramona Wis is the Mimi Rolland Endowed Professor in the Fine Arts, Professor of Music,  and Director of Choral Activities at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois. She conducts the  Concert Choir, Chamber Singers, and Chorale and teaches courses in conducting, music  methods, servant leadership, and yoga practice and principles. Dr. Wis holds degrees from the  University of Illinois, Northern Illinois University, and a Ph.D. from Northwestern University and  is an active festival conductor, clinician, writer, and public speaker. Dr. Wis also taught in the  graduate program at Northwestern University and at Northern Illinois University, and has  presented workshops and keynote addresses across the country and in Canada, including  presentations for the British Columbia Music Educators Association, the Greenleaf Center for  Servant-Leadership International Conference, Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic, Tennessee  Arts Academy, GALA Choruses, the American Choral Directors Association, and for various music  education organizations, teacher institutes, and virtual meetings with graduate and  undergraduate university students across the country.

Choral ensembles under Dr. Wis’s leadership have performed at Carnegie Hall in New York City,  Orchestra Hall at Symphony Center Chicago, with jazz legend Dave Brubeck, at international  venues on tours to France, Germany, Austria, Ireland, Japan, and Canada, and at ACDA, ILMEA,  and GIA conferences. Dr. Wis is the author of The Conductor as Leader: Principles of Leadership  Applied to Life on the Podium and the newly released video course on leadership through  Forward Motion, the online learning center from Manhattan Concert Productions. She has  written for The Choral Journal, Music Educators Journal, Teaching Music and the China Europe  International Business School Review and is a contributing author to Toward a Description of  Musical Experience and The Musical Experience: Rethinking Music Teaching and Learning. She is  also a blogger for ChoralNet under “The Conductor as Yogi.”  

As a leader, Dr. Wis was the first woman President of the American Choral Directors Association  in Illinois and is the 2019 recipient of the Harold Decker award “in recognition of the significant  contribution made to the lives of innumerable choral singers, conductors, and audiences who  have been privileged to experience the finest in choral music as presented under her direction.”  She has served on professional arts boards and as department chair of Music, as well as Art and  Theatre, at North Central College. 

Dr. Wis holds the 500-hour advanced yoga teacher certification (CYT/RYT), continuing her study  of the body-mind connection in choral music, conducting, and personal growth and wellness and  she is a Certified Brain Longevity® Specialist by the Alzheimer’s Research and Prevention  Foundation. Beyond her yoga studio teaching, Dr. Wis has woven yoga into her work at North  Central College, teaching yoga workshops for the Master of Science in Physican Assistant Studies  program, a “Yoga On and Off the Mat” honors seminar course, and yoga classes for the  swim/dive team, and she incorporates yoga into each choral rehearsal.