Have You Met?

The young and energetic Phoenix native, Lindsay Galbut, is passionate about nonprofits.

She is especially enthused about Muralcles, the University- based nonprofit she founded in 1999 while still an undergraduate at the University of Arizona. This organization provides friendship, healing and support to hospitalized children via art and music therapy. Young patients at the University Medical Center in Tucson and the Tucson Medical Center are serenaded by student musicians, invited to partake in art projects and each patient is given a box filled with art supplies to keep and to keep busy while in the hospital.

Muralcles lives up to its name by painting murals throughout various hospital areas. “ I had asthma as a child, and my parents brought me an art set that helped me express feelings which were difficult to verbalize”. It became clear to Lindsay that art therapy is important for sick children.

During her high school and college years, Lindsay filled many leadership roles. While participating in the University of Arizona’s McGuire Entrepreneurship Program, she learned how to start, maintain, and grow an organization.

Drawn to working with children, Lindsay was already organizing holiday parties at hospitals when she became acutely aware of the white, cold sterile image the facilities projected. It became her goal to make hospitals brighter, colorful, and friendlier; hence the idea was born for creating an organization that brings art and music into hospitals.

The first mural at the University Medical Center’s emergency waiting room depicts a circus theme and is compiled of a number of sketches created by volunteers. Up to 150 students were involved in Muralcles during its first year at UA. Another mural located in the main pediatric ward of the University Medical Center has an underwater theme, and still draws admiration from hundreds of hospital patients, visitors and medical staff.

After graduating Magna cum Laude with a dual degree in Marketing and Entrepreneurship, and receiving the 2000 Robie Gold Medal Award at UA, Lindsay moved to Chicago to pursue a career in advertising. There she was employed as a Media Associate for Leo Burnett’s media division, Starcom (the global advertising giant) working on the General Motors account. After Starcom, Lindsay founded her own PR and marketing restaurant consulting practice, Utensils, Inc. (tools for restaurant marketing).

After Utensils, Lindsay worked as a Strategic Brand Analyst in Younger Girls Marketing at Mattel in El Segundo, California.

Today she is the Director of Marketing for Galbut & Hunter (www.galbuthunter.com), a prominent Phoenix law firm specializing in business litigation and corporate and international law.

To her gratification, Muralcles continued even after Lindsay graduated. A founding member of the original UA group even went on to found a second Muralcles group at Arizona State University. The ASU group will in the near future likely be working with Phoenix Children’s Hospital and has worked with Banner Desert Medical Center.

Lindsay says that “Muralcles members love children, the arts, and helping others. Muralcles is unique in that it involves university-based volunteers, combining the arts and music in a pediatric hospital setting.”

Back again in Phoenix, Lindsay is in an advisory role now with Muralcles. Possibly in the future she will take the nonprofit national. Lindsay says an important sidelight of Muralcles is “the maturing and learning process that volunteers experience as they work through running the organization, working with hospital staff, and interacting with patients. Those who join as freshmen and sophomores truly grow through the organization.”

Besides her volunteer work with Muralcles, Lindsay is also involved with PRSA, the Public Relations Society of America as its Phoenix chapter Membership Chair, and WoMAC, the Women’s Metropolitan Arts Council (a support group to the Phoenix Art Museum). In addition, she is a national and local member of LMA, the Legal Marketing Association.

Lindsay admits she has very little downtime, but some activities she enjoys are Pilates, yoga, and spending time with her family and friends. She has traveled extensively to Europe, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Ecuador, and Fiji

Known for her sense of humor, creativity and general joy of life, it has been Lindsay’s goal to spread cheer to not only friends and family, but also to young hospitalized children. Even at her young age she has created a lasting legacy!