Vernita Pearl Fort has engaged music and the arts as tools of human development and community flourishing throughout her life, including during the 25 years that she served as a career diplomat with the United States Agency for International Development, United States Department of State. Building upon this career, upon her performance background, and upon her formal training in evolutionary biology, economics, dance and music with an MS from Yale University and a BS from the University of California, Berkeley, she is currently completing a Ph.D. dissertation entitled, Music, Mind, and Polity for Human Rights: A Transdisciplinary Analysis. She undertakes this research through the Institute of Communications Research, College of Media, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she began her association as a Visiting Scholar. Through multiple triangulation as her research method, she employs critical ethnography, critical neuroepigenetics, and political economy to explore the cultural, biological, and political relationships between music and human rights. Through this process, she explores how local and global citizens and institutions can more effectively use music to negotiate and realize human rights. Her research reminds us that music was one of the earliest forms of human communication. Fundamentally, she reminds us of music’s power. She argues that not only is music a pivotal tool for negotiating and realizing human rights, but also that the development of music capability itself, is a human right. It is with this understanding, along with her earlier experiences, including those while working across 40 countries and several continents, that she joins the 2015 team of Le Château de la Voix.