dance
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Just For Kix
Just For Kix is a Minnesota-based youth dance company that pairs hands-on dance instruction with a full retail catalog of dancewear, costumes, shoes and custom team apparel. Founded in 1981 by coach Cindy Clough in Brainerd, it runs more than 200 community dance programs across a dozen states, hosts summer camps and the ReliaQuest Bowl performance tour, and outfits dancers through its shop and in-house Alexandra Collection - all built on a team-first, confidence-building philosophy rather than a competition-only model.
Nicole Lauchaire
Nicole Lauchaire is the Chief Marketing Officer and Head of Retail/D2C at Varsity Spirit, the Memphis-based company at the center of competitive cheerleading and dance. A former high school and Florida State cheerleader who drove to Memphis in a Honda Civic to take a lower-paying camp-adjacent job, she has spent roughly 24 years full time (29 counting her camp-instructor years) building the brand: the 2007 re-brand, the launch of Varsity TV, the St. Jude partnership, and the company's social and PR presence. She is one of the rare women to hold a C-suite title in sports, a TEDxMemphis speaker on reinventing your life, and a marathon-running, mountain-hiking adventurer who preaches saying yes.
Tara Lee Ford
Tara Lee Ford runs Oddball Films, the San Francisco stock footage archive holding over 50,000 film elements of the strange, beautiful and forgotten. A theater and dance performer who spent four decades alongside founder Stephen Parr, she now keeps the 'oddball' in Oddball Films.
Judene Jean-Louis
Judene Jean-Louis is a Partner at Andreessen Horowitz's Cultural Leadership Fund - the first VC fund comprised exclusively of Black cultural leaders committed to Black wealth generation. A Jamaican immigrant and Brooklyn native who trained professionally as a dancer, she brought dual MFA and MBA credentials to Silicon Valley's most ambitious experiment in cultural capital. At a16z, she bridges world-class entertainers, athletes, and cultural icons with early-stage technology investments, while funneling all management fees and carry back into nonprofits that funnel Black talent into tech.