“A Life built around Music” may be the best way to sum up Sue K Riley.  Sue was drawn to music from the age of 5 when her Grandfather, Waldo, started helping her with piano.  Sue always knew that music would be her life’s calling.  She began playing in churches at age 11, and started giving private piano lessons at age18.  Believing in the power of music to touch hearts and heal lives, Sue continues to mentor, teach, and share music through a wide variety of means.

She has been the Music Director of Unity Church of Clearwater, Florida for the past 20 years where she oversees a band, and a choir, and continues to encourage the members of the music ministry to seek out their musical gifts and to find their own voices.

Sue has also been the chair person for the Music Ministry Team of Unity Worldwide Ministries for the past 8 years.  Through her leadership, the team has created 10 songbooks of Positive New Thought Music for use in our spiritual centers, and created the Sound Connections Music Conference now in its 6th year.  This conference provides practical hands-on training for turning your church music department into a music ministry.

Sue is also Vice President of EmPower Music & Arts, with the mission of “Changing the World, One Song at a Time”.  Empower hosts the yearly Posi Awards, which recognizes excellence in songwriting for artists who create songs with messages of peace, oneness, and joyous living.

A prolific singer songwriter herself, Sue has created 6 CDs of original uplifting Posi music, along with numerous songbooks.  Sue has also compiled the book “Music Resources for New Thought Churches” now in its fourth edition  - a resource book that matches over 700 songs with a variety of common sermon topics.  

Sue and her business partner Richard Mekdeci are also finishing up their handbook on Music Ministry, full of practical tips on how to create a ministry, host successful special events, create a great service flow, hire a music director, speak “music-ese”, and many other topics vital to successful ministries.

Sue also tours the country performing in the EmPower “PosiPalooza” concerts which bring Posi Award Winning artists together in a unique, uplifting format where the artists swap songs in an organic musical conversation.  To date, they have produced over 100 of these concerts in the US and Canada to rave reviews.