GIOIA CHILTON ’85: The Art of Creating Yourself

At the intersection of creativity, science, and service, Gioia Chilton ’85 is pursuing knowledge while helping to heal others.

Looking back, Gioia sees Millbrook as the place where her life’s passions first took root and were given space to grow. It was here that she learned the value of curiosity and that art, service, leadership, and scholarship could all coexist and inform each other. That early freedom to think expansively shaped her journey toward a PhD and a career in arts-based research. In celebrating alumni who embody “out-of-the-box” thinking, Gioia’s story reminds us how important it is to encourage young minds to explore widely and follow their own unique path. As an artist, researcher, therapist, and educator, her work challenges traditional boundaries and offers a powerful example of what it means to think, and live, outside the box.

Long before she became an emerging expert in the field of arts-based research, she was a teenager wandering Millbrook’s campus, sketchbook in hand, following the tug of her own questions and discovering who she wanted to become. Millbrook taught her that real learning isn’t confined to classrooms or textbooks—it lives in wonder, in practice, in the messy edges where art, science, and service intersect. That early permission to think differently—to blend disciplines and take her own path—became the foundation for a life of inquiry. Gioia’s story is a reminder of how education, at its best, nurtures not just knowledge but the courage to follow your heart.

Looking back, Gioia can trace the roots of her journey to Millbrook’s classrooms and studios. Following in the footsteps of her father, Karl Connell, Jr. ’42, Gioia landed at Millbrook in 1981, thousands of miles from her home in Florida. Millbrook offered a college-preparatory curriculum that was grounded by an integrated and excellent arts program and core values—including service and stewardship—that were imbued into students’ daily lives. Gioia took the opportunity presented to her and particularly loved her arts and history courses. “I have wonderful memories of my art teacher, Mr. Beecher.”

Encouraged by Mr. Beecher and other teachers who valued both artistic exploration and intellectual rigor, she developed an early sense that art and creative thinking informed other subjects, even the subjects, like math and language, in which she struggled. Matriculating to Bennington College in Vermont in 1985, Gioia focused on sculpture and psychology in her undergraduate studies and then met with an educational consultant to talk about where her interests might lead her. “I liked being an artist, but I didn’t want to show my work in galleries and sell it. I wanted to work with people, help people.” The consultant introduced her to the profession of art therapy, and that eventually led to her master’s degree in art therapy from George Washington University in 1994 and commitment to the emerging field.

In 2014, Gioia earned her PhD in Creative Arts Therapies from Drexel University, and since then, she has made significant contributions across clinical, educational, and community-based settings. At the Intrepid Spirit Center in Ft. Belvoir Community Hospital, she currently develops and delivers innovative art therapy interventions for active-duty service members dealing with traumatic brain injury and PTSD, working as part of an interdisciplinary team under the Creative Forces initiative. “My father was a veteran…it feels really good to be serving people who serve our country. So, this mission, serving the servers, really has a lot of meaning for me personally.”

She is also an adjunct professor at Drexel University, an online lecturer at Syracuse University, and a published author of many research papers, books and book chapters, and peer-reviewed articles. Her previous roles include providing counseling and art therapy to elementary students and adolescents with emotional, learning, and behavioral problems, supporting adults in recovery from substance abuse through expressive therapy, and facilitating creative workshops for cancer survivors and caregivers.

Gioia’s career embodies the Millbrook values of curiosity, service, stewardship, and integrity—through work that bridges academic rigor with human emotion and imagination. She encourages her students to trust the insights that can emerge through creative work and expressing themselves in the safe places she helps create. She is living out some of the lessons she first learned at Millbrook: thinking outside the box isn’t about rejecting structure—it’s about expanding it, making room for more voices, more questions, and more possibilities.

In her life and work, Gioia embodies a truth that Millbrook knows well: the world’s greatest changes often begin with a spark of creativity and the courage to see it through.