Trina Martin spotted Round Rock’s potential before most people had heard of it. Thirty years ago, she drove down from Dallas at age 26 to open a major music retail store here, at a time when the city was still being designed around what it might become. Within two years, that store was the top-producing location in the entire chain. She knew something was here. That instinct never left her.
Today Trina runs Parents for Arts Education, a parent-powered advocacy organization fighting to keep fine arts programs alive and funded in Texas schools. Her path there was anything but straight. She spent years in music marketing, created a foundation for music education back in 1996 (Willie Nelson cut a PSA for them, before cause marketing was even a phrase people used), and after 9/11 stepped back to raise her kids. Her children became dancers. She laughs about it now: “That’s how you rebel against your mother.”
Growing up as an Air Force brat, Trina moved to three different high schools in three different states. Band was the constant. It was how she plugged in before she knew a single person. She has been fighting for that experience, the one that kept her sane, ever since.
The moment she knew Parents for Arts Education had to go bigger came in a legislative meeting in Austin. A fine arts director stepped out of the room, and the politician turned to Trina and said: “Oh good, the teacher’s gone. I want to talk to you, the parent.” That sentence told her everything. The parent voice in arts advocacy had never been organized across all disciplines. She built the organization to fill that gap, and she is not done.
So here’s a question worth sitting with: what program gave you the skill, or the steadiness, that no one could have predicted would matter? Connect with Trina Martin on LinkedIn and learn more about her work at Parents for Arts Education.
