Allegra’s path to starting Sharing Notes began a lot like the rest of ours. She started taking orchestral auditions, practicing way too much, burning herself out and giving herself tendonitis, and making far less progress toward an orchestral job than she’d hoped. After a while, she realized that maybe being driven and ambitious didn’t have to mean pursuing this one single-minded goal. There had to be more to a life in music than the orchestra job she had always assumed she would get. She had to ask herself—is this what’s going to make me happy?

Read more: Sharing Notes with Allegra Montanari