Charla Weiss: Leadership with respect and empathy 

CSO board chair built life of accomplishment on a many-layered foundation

If you’re new to Cincinnati, then you know: The first question you were asked was “Where did you go to high school?” The second question: “Where are you from?” Because why would anyone want to be from anyplace other than Cincinnati?

If you ask Charla Weiss, you’re in for a treat. Her answer illuminates a personality informed by a kaleidoscope of landscapes and cultures and a passionate appreciation for the arts, including music. How fortunate for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, because Weiss is chair of its board of directors. 

I asked Weiss that pivotal second question first. Her response was a thoughtful exploration of personal experiences, heartfelt impressions and professional achievements. 

Charla Batsell Weiss’s foundation was laid by her parents, M. Gloriane and Charles Batsell. With roots in Missouri and Oklahoma, they were molded by the Great Migration and World War II. Military service was a transformative experience for Weiss’s father as it was for many men of his generation. His unit moved through Italy ahead of the infantry, blowing up or building bridges. But like many African American veterans, Charles could not get a comparable masonry or construction job in the post-war United States. In 1956, he took a position with the Bureau of Indian Affairs as an industrial arts teacher and he and M. Gloriane, a nurse, moved their daughters from Kansas City, Missouri, to Flandreau, South Dakota.

“We tripled the Black population of that town,” Weiss recalled. Her father taught in a boarding school attended by children from the Cherokee, Sioux and Cheyenne nations, among others. Weiss and her sister Alistair attended the all-white public school in town, an experience that was excruciatingly stressful. “I think a child understands when they are not wanted,” she said. 

The flip side of the Flandreau years was immersion into rich Native American cultural life. 

“I knew the seasons because of the festivals that they celebrated … that it was spring because there would be pow-wows. I didn’t think anything of the fact that someone’s last name was Running Bear.”

The next foundational layer of Weiss’s life came when she was 12. Her mother concluded that it was time for her girls to be with people who looked like them. She told her husband they had to get these girls back to where they will know who they are.

Saginaw, Michigan. Urban. Rust Belt. The public middle school was predominantly African American but Weiss didn’t fit in. Her academic record was more advanced and her speech patterns were not familiar to her new friends. Weiss looked like her classmates but she didn’t sound like them. That question came up again. “Where are you from?”

A perceptive teacher stepped in, assigned advanced schoolwork and mentored her. Federally court-ordered desegregation in the late 1960s resulted in the busing of students across northern cities. Weiss was volunteered by her parents to be the first African American child to attend an all-white high school in Saginaw.

Her new classmates asked, “Where are you from?”

The girl born in Kansas City and schooled on the plains of South Dakota transformed once again in her high school years, mindful of the advice of her parents (“Do your work. Keep your head down. Survive.”) and processing those tenets within her growing sense of self. It was here that Weiss reached a crossroads that would send her decades later into the path of a symphony orchestra.

“You can’t take my music from me.” Weiss studied piano and sang in the choir, participating in school musical productions including one of her favorites, “The Sound of Music.” She auditioned for the role of Mother Abbess and would have – should have – received it. But this was a character in a position of authority. 

“The music teacher said, ‘We don’t think the parent population will allow a Black girl to have the role,” Weiss said. She sang in the chorus instead. 

A liberating experience

That might have been the end of that chapter except that that same music teacher encouraged her to audition for The Interlochen Center for the Arts (“Inter-what?” she had asked) and helped her make an audition tape. In the summer before her junior year, she won a scholarship. Neither she nor her parents knew exactly what the Interlochen experience was. But they encouraged her. And that summer presented an epiphany. 

“Everyone was equal. It was the most liberating experience: to be seen for the gifts that you have to share,” Weiss said, smiling. From that point forward, more doors opened.

Weiss auditioned for a place at the Conservatory of Music at Olivet College in Olivet, Michigan, where she pursued a degree in sociology and keyboard (piano, organ, harpsichord). After an accident that severely injured her father, Weiss nearly dropped out because she was needed at home. But her parents were resolute that she should go back. She did.

Music became, in Weiss’s words, “a survival mechanism.” She finished Olivet then pursued a master’s degree in higher education at Indiana University, where she met and married Scott Weiss. “I knew immediately that she was the one,” he said. 

Charla Weiss accepted positions at Colorado State and the University of Michigan, where she pursued a Ph.D. From there, Weiss’s GPS took her to places near and far. Scott’s career (including one with Procter & Gamble) was the catalyst. The family – which soon included their children, Justin, Briana and Jacob – moved nine times. Weiss absorbed the energy of these places including Sydney, Australia – its opera house is one of her favorites – Hong Kong and San Francisco. 

In Hong Kong, she finished her dissertation. Deeply involved with the private school that her children attended there, Weiss noticed that students were having emotional difficulties as they reached the middle-school grades. She intuited that supportive resources were needed and formed a professional psychological counseling service to address these issues, all while raising children of her own. 

“I was stunned!” Scott Weiss commented. “She created a leadership style that respects and brings out the best in people. While I was flying all over Asia.”

The CSO’s music director, Cristian Măcelaru, an Interlochen alum and now artistic director of its orchestra, admires Weiss’s leadership style. She shows up, “is always taking notes” and “listening very carefully,” he said. 

“I love to have the full picture,” he added, “and I get the sense that Charla is the same.” 

The Cincinnati chapter

In 2011, the family moved again to Cincinnati when Charla Weiss took the position of director of the Office of Diversity and Inclusion at  Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, a position she relished. “Let’s figure out a way to make sure that we’re all comfortable,” she commented. A chance encounter in 2014 with then CSO board Chair Francie Hiltz led to the orchestra. And in 2025, Weiss began her term as board chair, with responsibility to oversee financial stability, guide strategic policy and support community advocacy. 

For her, the role is a privilege. “I think of myself not as the owner of the role but as its steward,” Weiss said, adding that she hopes to contribute to an orchestra that will, in the future, be “even more vibrant and welcoming” than it is today.

“She is super open,” said Mary McFadden Lawson, CSO chief philanthropy officer, adding that Weiss has “helped me think about being unapologetic about the way we work and what we’re passionate about. She brings a deep understanding to the role.”

Robert McGrath, CSO president and CEO, went further. 

“Charla is one of the most intellectually curious people I’ve met.” As the organization navigates its role in the community, McGrath said Weiss’s leadership is “concretely informed by a deep sense of empathy and an authentic desire to connect with people on a human level. The joy she takes from the position is infectious and ripples through the culture of the organization.” 

The CSO is not Weiss’s only passion. She’s on the boards of BLOC and Undivided Inc., nonprofits focused on engagement, including jobs training and placement, family support, access to fair housing and the promotion of inter-generational and interracial dialogue. Weiss’s off-time pursuits – books, film, music and travel – are curated with an eye toward expanding her understanding of the human condition. By crossing boundaries, exploring what is possible and listening, Weiss infuses passion into her work, whatever it may be. And she carries with her a palette of insights that have influenced those in her orbit. 

Weiss’s approach creates space for those around her to flourish. 

“I always feel that she is inviting me to have as much freedom as I want,” Măcelaru concluded. “She has a well-defined picture of the institution and of what we want to achieve – together.”

Is there more to be said about the illuminate-what’s-possible person who is Charla Weiss? Her husband Scott said it best. 

“What lights Charla up are the people. Her energy for people is like watching Niagara Falls.”

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The 2026-27 Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra season opens with a weekend-long festival Oct. 2-4 in Music Hall. Cristian Măcelaru leads the CSO with guest artists violinist Nicola Benedetti, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. 

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First-time M&M contributor Sheila J. Williams is the author of seven novels, with an eighth arriving in December. She was librettist of “Fierce,” an opera with music by William Menefield premiered by Cincinnati Opera in 2022. She resides in Northern Kentucky.