Dr. Suzanne Peterson is a management professor at the W. P. Carey School of Business and Center for Responsible Leadership at Arizona State University and a consultant for an executive coaching firm. She’s also a championship dancer, twice winning the Holiday Dance Classic in Las Vegas and grabbing the 2007 Hotlanta US Open Pro‐Am Latin Championship, among others.
Suzanne took some dance classes when she was a teenager, but she never seriously considered dance as a career. Suzanne knew from the time she was in high school that she wanted to be an executive. “I didn’t grow up knowing exactly what I wanted to be, but I knew that I wanted to wear business suits, speak to large groups of people and have them listen to me, and have a title. I always saw myself as being able to wear great business suits for some reason. And I liked the idea that I could visualize myself in front of groups of people and have something important to say. But dancing was not a passion when I was young. It was something you did because what else do girls do as a hobby if they don’t want to play soccer and baseball?”
Her rediscovery of dance and the intense excitement that accompanied it this time around came nearly accidentally. “I was just looking for a hobby and my achievement and motivation got the best of me. I was about twenty‐six, and I was in graduate school. At this time, salsa and swing dancing were getting popular, so I’d just go into the social dance studio and I would watch. I’d mimic what the teachers were doing. Slowly but surely I started taking group lessons and then some private lessons. The next thing I know, it’s this huge part of my life. So it really was a progression based on my belief that I had the requisite talent for it and sort of the basic ability level. But probably my academic side allowed me to study it and focus on it just like any other subject.
“And I literally would study it like any other academic science. Huge visualization. I would sit on planes and I would visualize myself going through all the dances. So anytime I couldn’t physically practice, I would mentally practice. I could feel the music. I could feel the emotions. I could see the facial expressions. And I would come the next day to the dance studio after being gone and I would be better. And my dance partner would say, ‘How did you get better overnight? Weren’t you traveling to Philadelphia?’ and I would say, ‘Oh, I practiced on the plane.’ And I literally would practice up to two hours in my head totally uninterrupted.
“I went into dancing the same way I go into my career—you give 110 percent and you go in strong and powerful. And I realized that when you do that in dancing, it’s too much. You lose the femininity and, all of a sudden, you’re in everybody’s face so much. The business side is power and confidence and all these things. And the dancing is vulnerability and sensuality, everything soft. You go from one to the other and I enjoy them equally.”
Suzanne in fact seems to have found her Element in multiple ways. She loves her profession, and she loves what she does for recreation. “If I’m really teaching something about leadership that I’m passionate about, I get the same exact feeling except that it’s just a different emotion. I mean I feel confident and powerful and very connected to the audience and I want to make a difference. And then in the dancing I feel more vulnerable, a little less confidence. But they’re both escapes in different ways and I get completely engulfed in them and get very moved by them emotionally.”
Ultimately, though, her life has added meaning because she’s chosen a recreational pursuit that is fulfilling, rather than simply entertaining. “It’s taught me more about communication than studying communication ever could. You realize the effect that you have on another person. If you were in a bad mood, that person knows it in a second just touching your hand. And so in my head I could feel the perfect connection that’s in a partnership, the perfect communication. I would feel extremely happy.
“It’s a flow experience. I mean it’s a complete release. I don’t think about anything. I don’t think about anything good in my life. I don’t think about anything bad in my life. Literally, I would not get distracted if gunshots went off. It’s really amazing.”
Suzanne’s sister, Andrea Hanna, is an executive assistant working in Los Angeles. Like Suzanne, she’s found a pursuit beyond her job that adds dimension to her life.
“I didn’t like writing until my senior year of high school,” she told me. “My English teacher told us to write a compelling college entrance essay about anything of our choice. Like most assignments, I dreaded the idea of sitting down and writing a five‐paragraph essay that was just going to end up covered in red pen. Nonetheless, I finally sat down and wrote about how unprepared I felt for college but how excited I was to start a new chapter of my life. This was the first essay I had ever written for school that had humor in it. It was also the first essay where I was able to write about something I was an expert on: me. To my surprise, my teacher loved it and read it in front of the class. She also entered it into a writing contest. I won first place and was asked to read my paper in front of a large group of professional women writers. I even got my picture in the paper! It was exciting for me and gave me a boost of confidence as I entered college.
“I have always been told I have a very strong writer’s voice. People always tell me, ‘I can hear you while I read this.’ In college I started sending friends the occasional comedic e‐mail recapping our weekends. I would turn each one of my friends into a character and embellished the story just enough to get the laugh I wanted. My e‐mails started getting circulated amongst groups of friends and pretty soon I would get a reply from someone I wouldn’t know telling me how great my writing was. It felt great to be so good at something that came so naturally for me.
“The summer between my sophomore and junior year, I got a job as a receptionist at a radio station. Within a month, I had started writing funny advertising spots for the station. The station manager loved my ideas and put them on air. All my friends would tune in to hear my funny commericals, many of which I starred in myself. It felt really good to hear my work produced and get the response I had sought out to get.
“As my work got recognized, I started realizing I had a talent for something that could possibly be a career. I entered the entertainment industry right after college. I had several jobs working for television writers and film producers, learning the ropes. After years of coffee runs and executive car washes, I realized that many of these ‘dream jobs’ were some of the least creative jobs out there. At one point, I dreamt of being a writer for Saturday Night Live, but learned weekly deadlines and high‐stress environments take any enjoyment out of it for me. I began to think, why does a paycheck validate my talent? When it comes down to it, I just love to make people laugh and if one of my sketches, short stories, or funny e‐mails makes someone crack up, well that’s really enough for me. I became a much happier person when I came to that realization.