The Voice of the Heart

When eight-year-old Sandra Joseph saw the limp Christmas stocking dangling by the fireplace, she thought Santa Claus hadn’t come. But when she reached her hand inside and drew out a ticket to the musical Annie, her heart filled with the kind of happiness that takes a lifetime to fully grasp. The show was in February, and she eagerly crossed off the passing days on her calendar in magic marker. And on the night of the performance, as she listened to the voice of the orphan ring pure and brave through the theater, Sandra heard another voice—the voice of her heart. “I knew immediately that that’s what I wanted to do,” she remembers today. “I wanted to be up there acting and singing just like that little girl.”

But Sandra was a shy, insecure child who feared the spotlight. She felt the inner conflict of her introverted nature wrestling with her dream, and believed she’d never be able to go on stage. She felt a glimmer of hope, however, when her fifth grade music teacher held private tryouts for a solo during the school’s Christmas concert. “Mrs. Maters was a sweet teacher who had a way of making everyone feel safe,” Sandra recounts. “I sang in front of her, and she gave me the solo.”

But on the night of the concert, peaking inside the gym doors and seeing the big crowd, Sandra panicked. She told Mrs. Maters she couldn’t do it, begging her to give the part to someone else. The teacher complied, but as Sandra stood in the risers watching a classmate sing the solo she had practiced over and over in her bedroom, a profound sense of regret washed over her. “It was a defining moment for me,” she says. “At the age of ten, I understood that when you quit before you try, you have to live with that regret and feeling of failure—all the things I was afraid I might feel if I got out there and blew it. I told myself that going forward, no matter how afraid I felt, I was going to show up and figure out a way to do this thing that I love.”

From that moment on, Sandra moved differently through moments of fear, focusing instead on the love that propelled her. And in that commitment, she found a courage that carried her farther than she ever thought she’d go—from the bottom half of a small duplex in Detroit to New York City, and from performing only for the stuffed animals on her bed to being the longest-running leading lady in the longest-running Broadway show of all time, The Phantom of the Opera. Now a keynote speaker inspiring audience after audience to listen to the voice of the heart when making the age-old choice between love and fear, she knows she would not be here today had she not made that promise to herself at ten years old. “There are still so many times where I’m given opportunities that feel too big for me,” she acknowledges. “Even though I’m afraid, I say yes every time. If I show up and give it my all, it’s a success no matter what happens out there.”

But the key to true success, as she defined it, was figuring out how to bring along her own authentic presence in those moments of courage and showing up. The Tibetan phrase for authentic presence is ‘wangthang,’ which literally translates to ‘field of power.’ “You can access your field of power through listening to the voice of your heart,” she says. “But it took a long time—and a lot of encouragement from my dad—for me to let myself really listen to what mine was saying.”

Sandra was born and raised in Detroit, where her father managed a car dealership and her mother took care of the home. He loved being around Sandra and her older sister, Monica, and would do whatever he could to make them laugh. He performed magic tricks to entertain the neighborhood kids, and on evenings after the rest of the family had gone to bed, he and Sandra would stay up late having heart-to-hearts. “We’d be watching a movie, and he’d turn off the TV and ask me what was going on in my life,” she remembers. “He wouldn’t settle for ‘nothing much.’ He was genuinely interested, and that’s all a kid wants, right? It was so incredible to have parents that saw the best in me and loved me no matter what, even if I failed. He was my hero.”

Growing up in the bottom half of a small two-bedroom duplex, Sandra and Monica shared a double bed when they were little. “We fought like all siblings do when we were kids, but my sister is my soulmate,” Sandra says. “She is all heart – just an immensely loving person. Of my peers, she had the biggest influence on me growing up, by far.” Their father came from an incredibly large Lebanese family, and over a hundred of their relatives lived in the Detroit area, so Sandra grew up feeling surrounded by a loving tribe.

Sandra’s father loved theater and was an actor himself before the girls were born, performing in local plays around Detroit until fatherhood claimed his free time. At home, he would point out movie scenes to his young daughters, making sure they recognized especially poignant expressions in the eyes of Paul Newman or Marlon Brando. He would play Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole albums in the basement, teaching them an appreciation for the crooners. But he never pushed his daughters to perform—rather, it was an innate love that drove each to the stage.

The Josephs moved to a home in the suburbs when Sandra was in fifth grade. She lost three of her four grandparents through her middle school years, marking a particularly trying time for the family. In high school, Monica started singing and doing shows, and when she landed her first lead in a musical, she told Sandra they’d let her into the chorus without auditioning if she just showed up after school. It was Sandra’s very first musical.

When Sandra was sixteen, her school announced that the musical that year would be Annie, so she started voice lessons with a mother in the neighborhood who had a background in opera. Sandra landed her first leading role, a full-circle moment that would have made her eight-year-old self glow. Her success made her father glow as well, but not only because her acting was stellar or because she could hit the high note with such gusto. More importantly, he loved when her cast mates, director, or crew would come up to tell him what a lovely person she was to work with. “He was so incredibly supportive and encouraging, wanting me to do whatever it was that made me happy,” Sandra reflects. “But he always made it clear to me that what mattered most was the kind of human being I was. From an early age, he instilled in me that making your contribution to the world is not only about what you do, but about how you do it—what kind of person you are.”

In thinking what kind of person she wanted to be, it was important to Sandra to be able to support herself in life, and she was eager to get her feet wet in the working world. She got a job as a receptionist at a hair salon when she was fifteen, balancing her work obligations with school and theater rehearsals. “I’m forever grateful to my mom, who taught my sister and me the importance of balance. There’s so much emphasis in our culture on working hard that we sometimes forget the importance of laughing, having a good time, and just enjoying life. My mom is one of the most quick-witted, naturally funny people you’ll ever meet.  She brings the fun wherever she goes,” Sandra reflects. “

Going to college out of state was not an option financially, so Sandra decided to attend Michigan State University for the plethora of options it afforded. At seventeen, she was too afraid to dare allow herself to consider performing as a career, but she had no idea what else to pursue. She considered hotel and restaurant management but opted to major in communications, all the while taking voice lessons with a talented professor, Meredith Zara, who had spent two decades traveling Europe as an opera star. “As I started learning what my instrument could do, my confidence grew,” she says. “I started realizing maybe I had something I could use. But I certainly wasn’t thinking I’d move to New York and become a Broadway star. That was nowhere in my reality. I took it one day and one challenge at a time, seeing how far it could take me.”

After college, Sandra moved to the mecca of musical theatre, New York City. She knew the odds of making it as a singer were despairingly miniscule, but her father encouraged her to go to the Big Apple with a time limit. “He told me to give it five years and see what happened,” she says. “If it didn’t work out, I could always come home, but at least I would have given it my best shot.” With his voice in her head, Sandra auditioned like crazy in NYC and eventually landed a European tour, where she spent a year overseas performing snippets of various musicals. “It was decidedly unglamorous because we sometimes spent eight hours a day on a bus, traveling from city to city performing in the evenings,” she says. “But it was thrilling to be earning a living as a performer.”

When the tour ended and she arrived back in the states, she stopped home in Michigan. While there, her life was turned upside down when a disgruntled customer shot and killed a salesman at her father’s car dealership, and then came after her dad. Her father took two bullets and almost died, though he made it through. “That was a huge wake-up call for all of us,” she remembers. “He had had heart problems since I was fourteen, so this anxiety and fear of losing my dad—my person in the world—was always present. It contributed to the constant awareness I have of limited time.”

Sandra stayed in Michigan for a while after the shooting until her father healed. Her next job was singing and dancing on a cruise ship for six months. With the money she made, she returned to New York and auditioned until she ran out of funds again. She spent another six months performing on a different cruise ship, and then came back to New York to continue the vicious cycle. Competition for waitressing jobs was fierce, so she worked whatever temp jobs she could find. She still remembers the time her father sent a check pretending to pay her back for a $5.00 loan, and included a note that said “Whoops!” because he “forgot” the period and wrote it out for $500. “He didn’t have much to spare, but he knew I was struggling,” she smiles.

All the while, Sandra withstood the grueling lifestyle of auditioning, which began with circling the auditions she might be a good match for in each week’s edition of the industry newspaper, Backstage. Some mornings, she would rise at 4:00 AM, warm up her voice and body, put on her best audition dress, fuss over her hair and makeup, take the subway to Midtown, and wait in line for hours amongst hundreds of other girls who looked a lot like her. When the doors finally opened, she was lucky if she got the chance to sing sixteen bars of music. “Sometimes they’d bring in twenty girls at a time, line everyone up, and then dismiss eighteen of us based solely on how we looked,” she remembers. “So you might wait in line all day and then get sent home without ever having a chance to act or sing. It was brutal.”

Sandra was four years into her five-year plan when her agent got her an appointment to audition for the role of Christine in the Broadway production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s megahit, The Phantom of the Opera. She was terrified. After her first audition in a small studio for several supervisors, she was called back to sing on a Broadway stage for famed director Hal Prince, whom she describes as “the Steven Spielberg of Broadway.” “By that point I was completely broke and living on my friend’s sofa, scraping by on a bagel in the morning and a plain slice of pizza at night for $3 a day,” she recounts. “Then suddenly there I was, beneath that giant chandelier, standing before this legendary director. I was so overwhelmed that I was a total deer-in-the-headlights. I was staying true to my commitment to show up, but my fear came in the back door and I got in my own way.”

Sandra sang the song and hit the high note at the end, but her audition was not strong enough to land her a leading role on Broadway. She did, however, garner a part in the show – a chorus role on the national tour where she portrayed a mannequin and understudied Christine. “That was the start,” she says. “Even though I was literally playing a dummy, it was so exciting to finally be a working professional actor with a consistent job. I had a contract doing eight shows a week, traveling all over the country and actually earning a living! It was thrilling.”

After a year in the ensemble, the woman playing Christine on the national tour left for another production, and Sandra was flown to New York to audition—her second time on the stage of the Majestic Theater. “I wanted it to be perfect,” she recalls. “I preplanned everything and did the staged choreography Christine does while she sings ‘Think of Me,’ including waving a scarf. I wanted to show them that I could be expressive and graceful, but as I was performing, I very quickly sensed that I was over-acting and trying way too hard.”

When her agent called the next day to tell her she didn’t get the part, Sandra was crushed. She felt she had blown her big chance for the last time, and depression set in. She cursed herself for getting in her own way and felt she would never get another chance. “That was a really tough period of beating myself up and hating myself,” she says. “I knew better. I knew the most important thing was being believable and honest, but I got in my own way again—this time by trying to control every moment.”

Her father’s voice on the phone was the only comfort. “Think of how far you’ve come!” he said. “Remember just a year ago when you were living on your friend’s sofa and working in the mailroom at the Bank of Tokyo?” His words helped shift her perspective, reminding her that there was still so much to be grateful for. “I’ve always been a big believer in the power of gratitude to shift your perception of things, so I started writing down everything I had to be thankful for,” she explains. “I needed to get out of that mentality of lack and back into a space of being grateful.”

Sandra wrote thank you notes to people who had supported her in the Phantom world, including the assistant director, a woman who had put in a good word for her with Hal Prince and helped prepare her for the audition. Sandra felt she had let her down, so the note expressed her gratitude for all the help and support. “If this is as far as I ever get,” Sandra wrote, “I’ve already seen enough dreams come true to last a lifetime.” She knew how fortunate she was to be making a living doing something she loved, and she had to let go of the disappointment. “I don’t know how it works, but I really believe there is enormous power in gratitude and surrender,” she remarks. “Shortly after that, my agent called to let me know they still hadn’t found a new Christine, and they wanted to bring me back to give me one more chance.”

Lit with new hope, Sandra wrote a letter to Hal Prince, the words pouring directly from her heart. She described how she had gotten in her own way before, but she really wanted the part, and would work harder than she had ever worked to give the best performance, night after night. “I think it’s powerful to let people know that you want something and you’re willing to do the work to excel at it,” she says.

Heeding the advice of the supervisors, she stopped trying so hard to get results and be what she thought they wanted her to be. Instead of the flowery dress she had worn at the last audition, she wore her typical outfit of a black sweater and pants. She concentrated on showing up, being herself, living in the moment, and singing from the heart. “I focused on being authentic, because whether or not I got the part was not up to me,” she said. “If it wasn’t meant to be, then I wanted to be happy for the person who was meant to get it. I did my best to stay in the space of gratitude. The greatest gift in life had already been given to me: I had people in my life that loved me no matter the outcome. I sang the song from my heart, trying to stay present every moment because I might never get another chance to sing on a Broadway stage. I was able to touch into that flow place, to access that field of power.” Simple, authentic presence allowed the director and supervisors to connect with Sandra. Trust and honesty were the keys that brought about her best performance. “They called me the following day and said, ‘Congratulations! You got the part,’” Sandra says.

She played Christine on the national tour through 1996 and 1997, and will never forget when they brought on a new Phantom that year. The tour was at the Kennedy Center when Ron Bohmer joined the cast, and the sparks between Sandra and Ron were immediate. They only performed together for a total of four months, but they successfully maneuvered the chaotic lifestyle of show business and married in 2002.

Sandra was moved from the national tour to Broadway in 1998, where she poured her heart into 1,300 performances over the next eight years and came to understand stamina in a new way. “Grateful as I was to play the part, at some point the dream becomes a job and you have to crank out the same songs and the same scenes night after night,” she says. “I had done well over a thousand shows when I confided in an actor friend that I was really struggling, and that there were nights I didn’t know if I could go on. He told me to meet him for coffee the following week.”

Sitting across from him in the coffee shop, he handed Sandra the item that would become one of her most prized possessions—a purple box with the word perspective stenciled on the top. Inside were clippings he had unearthed from scouring the internet for stories from people all over the world who had been impacted by Phantom. The stories recounted how families had saved up for a year to take their children, or how people had gone with a parent and created a memory that lasted a lifetime despite that parent’s passing. Some mentioned Sandra by name, highlighting how her performance had moved them. “When we’ve been at it for a while and we’re deep in the day-to-day, it can be easy to forget why we’re doing it in the first place,” she recognizes. “I found my motivation in remembering that personal connection. I kept that box in my dressing room, and when I went out on stage, it was no longer a thousand strangers out there in the dark. It was that one person whose heart might be touched in a lasting way.”

As Sandra prepared to leave Phantom after ten years of being Christine, she knew she was done with the world of Broadway. She considered how she might use her voice in a new way, open to anything. She decided to take a retreat weekend away, and just a few hours in the peaceful, meditative space was enough to trigger the kind of mental download that changes lives. “As I lay down to sleep that first night, my head hit the pillow, and I had a vision like I was watching a movie in my mind,” she recounts. “I saw myself speaking and singing on stage, but for the first time I wasn’t wearing a costume, and I wasn’t part of a show. It was a level of vulnerability I hadn’t faced before. It’s one thing to have a character and a script to hide behind, but to get out there by myself and as myself was a terrifying idea.”

Just as performing and singing in front of people had frightened her as a child, Sandra saw keynote speaking as a new challenge that could lead to unparalleled levels of fulfillment and impact if she could find the inner strength to do it. She imagined she would speak to high school students who wanted to pursue a future in the arts but struggled with the same self-doubt and fear she had known when she was that age. “I knew it would be incredibly rewarding if I could just offer some companionship to others on their journey and have someone recognize their struggle in my struggle,” she says. “If I could help a young artist recognize that fear is a part of the journey and that you can be afraid and brave at the same time, that would be worthwhile.”

Soon after this vision, however, Sandra came face-to-face with new struggles of her own. In the year following her departure from Phantom, she found out she had a tumor on her brainstem pressing against the nerve that controls the motor function of the tongue. If the tumor were to require radiation treatment, she would never sing again. For the several-week-period spent waiting for the doctors’ recommendation, she faced some of the hardest questions she had ever considered in her life. “I had to ask myself, who am I beyond this voice?” she remembers. “Who am I beyond the voice I sing with and speak with? Can I identify more with my inner voice—the voice of my soul? That was huge for me.”

Surprisingly, Sandra felt no urgency to record an album or speak into microphones. She wasn’t concerned with the voice that had filled every corner of the Majestic Theater for a full decade; she was concerned with the voice of her heart. “I had heard wonderful, iconic women talk about how, as you get older, you become more comfortable in your own skin,” she says. “You accept and love yourself more. And as I contemplated my own mortality and impermanence, I wanted more than anything to inhabit that older, wiser, more self-accepting version of myself that I imagined I would get to in my elder years. I saw how important it was for me to start living that way now, because what if I never get those years? They’re not a given for any of us, and if I didn’t get the privilege of a long life, I didn’t want to waste any more time beating myself up for not being this idealized version of myself I thought I was supposed to be.”

Thankfully, incredibly, the tumor was not life threatening, and Sandra did not need radiation. But she was forever changed for the better for it, and she resolved to use the voice of her heart to help others connect to theirs. Her first speaking invitation came from her former high school choir teacher, who had opened a charter school for performing arts. To prepare, she attended a speechwriting and speaking seminar, where she shared her story and immediately caught the attention of a man who happened to be a coach for financial advisors. When he told her she had to come speak at his seminar, she was nervous at first. “I knew nothing about his world, but he said not to worry—I’d just tell my story on stage, and he would draw the connections,” she says. “I decided to do it, and I arrived early so I could get a sense of the discussions. I thought I’d learn about investing, but it wasn’t anything about that. It was actually all about the same personal struggles I confronted as a performer—how to show up, bring your best, perform at a high level, be authentic, connect with people, and build trust. It’s all the same journey.”

Sandra has since marveled at how her story resonates in industries and audiences she never imagined. From the world’s top insurance professionals, to financial advisors, to women’s groups, to New York Times bestselling authors, she sees more similarities than differences as she crosses sectors. “I want to go wherever I can be of service, so I don’t have a narrow focus on audience,” she says. “I never dreamed that speaking would lead me to the corporate world, and it’s been so rewarding because I’ve learned a lot about other businesses. I’m staying open, and in these incredible opportunities that have come my way, I’ve seen that we all have the same fears and the same hopes. We just want to be who we are and use what we have to make a difference for others. I do what I do now because it’s a way of bringing us all together—a way to make visible that connection that’s inherently part of all of us.”

Through it all, her husband Ron has been constantly supportive and resourceful in making their marriage work across space and time. He most recently toured with The Book of Mormon, and could see even from afar that she had found a path in perfect alignment with her purpose. “It’s been quite a learning curve to go from being a part of a big production, to being in business for myself,” Sandra confesses. “As my speaking career has blossomed, I’ve had to learn how to operate as an entrepreneur. My husband’s support through this journey has been invaluable.”

Today, Sandra leads a workshop called Performing as a Path to Presence, designed to help people from all walks of life overcome their own self-limiting beliefs, to find their voice and show up as the fullest expression of who they really are. Employing singing and speaking, individuals learn to move through vulnerability, inhabit their authentic presence, and find their inner courage. She plans to expand these workshops into destination retreats in the future. Sandra also supports The Girl Power Project, a branch of a non-profit called Just Like My Child.

In advising young people entering the working world today, Sandra emphasizes the importance of staying true to yourself and your own definition of success. “Achieving a life of fulfillment, contribution, and happiness is an individual journey,” she says. “There are a lot of voices out there in our culture that try to define what a successful, happy life is supposed to look like—fame, money, looking a certain way. It’s all nonsense. I hope young people trust that who they are is already enough. If they just show up and keep moving in the direction of what they love, what lights them up, what makes them feel alive, it will lead them exactly where they’re supposed to be and where they can make the greatest contribution.” Her old high school launched a performing arts scholarship in her name—a tangible example of how Sandra hopes to support young people in finding the courage to follow the voice of their hearts.

Beyond that, Sandra is a firm believer in the power of gratitude, and bookends each day by writing down what she’s grateful for. “We’re hardwired to focus on the negative, so I work to overcome that by taking five minutes at the beginning and end of the day to focus on gratitude,” she says. “Exercise, meditation and mindfulness practice are essentials for me as well. There’s an old Sioux saying I love: ‘The longest journey you’ll ever make in your whole life is from your head to your heart.’ I try to make sure my head and my heart are as connected as possible so I can live in alignment with my highest purpose. We have limited time here, so I do my best to be intentional about how I’m spending my days. My highest intention is to put love, gratitude, and joy center stage so that when the curtain comes down, whenever that may be, I’ll know that I lived life to the fullest.”

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