Alumni Spotlight: Kara Claudy ’07

Kara Claudy (Academy class of 2007) is an Atlanta-based singer-songwriter self-releasing her debut album on May 5, 2015. The daughter of a United States Marine and a Korean mother, Kara spent her childhood in points as exotic as Okinawa, Japan, and as all-American as Aurora, Colorado, and northeastern Indiana.

Coming to the Indiana Academy gave Kara access to creative development in the form of challenging humanities classes, passionate faculty, and talented colleagues. While there, she created new bonds with friends and fellow music lovers by helping to start a guitar club and open mic nights for the school. As graduation approached, her classmates chose a song written by Kara as their class song. This early encouragement of her songwriting helped lead to her pursuance of it as a career.

After graduating from the Academy, Kara attended Emory University in Atlanta, graduating summa cum laude from Goizueta Business School. She credits the Academy as an essential stepping stone giving her the confidence to move from Indiana to Georgia and to excel academically at Emory. She went on to work for Procter and Gamble in business development based in Charlotte, but life and love called her back to Atlanta after her engagement to her husband. After another year in the corporate world working for World 50, a private community for senior-most executives from Fortune 500 companies, Kara realized it was time to build on her business foundation and focus on her dream of making music into a career.

Since leaving World 50 to launch her music career, Kara has established herself in the Atlanta scene, playing various festivals and venues in the metro area all while collaborating with producer Will Mitchell on her record. After the release of her album, she will continue to write and perform in the Southeast and beyond with the goal of making a full-length album next summer.

Kara’s early life and Academy experience taught her that music brings people together in a way that transcends geographic boundaries, language barriers and different backgrounds. This belief is evident in her songwriting, which, like others of her ilk, explores the joy and fragility of the human experience through stories we can all identify with.

While the genre’s acoustic tradition inspires her backup instrumentals, dynamic tempos couple with her rich voice to create a sound reminiscent of ’90s crossover artists like Lisa Loeb and Sarah McLachlan, and even a touch of David Gray. You can hear her music on her website, www.karaclaudy.com.