Meet Megan Meyers, Owner and Director of Expressions Dance Studio

Megan Meyers is a dancer who won national awards with high school team, the Napa High Spiritleaders. In 2002, Megan was crowned Miss Napa County and competed at the state level of the Miss America pageant. She graduated from the UC Berkeley with a Business degree in 2004, and was a cheerleader for the Oakland Raiders' Raiderettes for several years, even representing the Raiderettes at the Pro Bowl in 2007. Today, Megan is the owner and director of Napa's Expressions Dance Studio, which offers dance classes for girls ranging in age from preschool to high school.

1. How did your dance experience and your business experience come together in the founding of Expressions Dance Studio?

I've always had the entrepreneurial spirit. Even as a little girl, I would set up little businesses to provide services for family and friends. Everything from lemonade stands to car washing, house cleaning, and shoe shining services. I fell in love with dancing in high school as a Napa High Spiritleader. The two passions were joined when I was asked to teach dance for an afterschool program. That class was taught on a volunteer basis, but incidentally a local dance school closed down at the same time, and I was asked to start a couple of additional classes for pay. That provided me with my first dozen students and Expressions Dance Studio was born! That was 13 years ago, and it's been an amazing journey ever since.

2. What are some of the benefits of dance class for your students?

There are so many benefits to dance lessons, but the biggest benefit is that dance lessons are such a wonderful way to build up self-esteem and confidence in girls. Dance is taught as a group class, but development and progress of each dancer month by month, year by year is a very personal journey. Nothing builds confidence better than individual progress, growth, and achievement, no matter how big or small. My hope is that all of our students can benefit from dance lessons like I did. I went from being a painfully shy child to a fearless young adult, and I attribute most of that change to my dance lessons. The skills and values I developed in dance class such as persistence, having a positive attitude, learning how to set and reach goals, learning to work with others, and the ability to perform in front of an audience--it all helped me develop self-confidence, and of course that translated into success in all other areas of my life.

3. Would you tell us about what inspired you to develop--and expand--your Princess Ballerina Program?

I was inspired to create a fun and imaginative program for preschoolers. Often times, preschool dance programs are sort of an afterthought for many dance studios, so I saw a need for a quality program that specifically catered to this age group. My full vision for the Princess Ballerina program is pretty exciting. I'm currently developing a book series that will allow us to introduce story, characters, themes, props, and magical adventures into our Princess Ballerina classes. It's been a big project, but I'm very excited to start revealing all of the new themes and stories that will be coming fall 2015. There really is nothing like it currently in the industry. 

4. When starting a dance studio, what made you decide to focus on dance classes for kids?

I personally know the power that dance lessons can have on a young girl. I benefited in high school, but my goal for developing programs for children is to hopefully reach girls from a younger age so they can reap the benefits as early as possible. You're never too young to feel confident in your own abilities!

5. What are some of your favorite things about your job?

Well come on, I mean who wouldn't love to work in a world filled with sparkly costumes, glitter, music, and dancing? I think I was born to own a dance studio. I love everything about it, from the choreographing or picking music and costumes to the behind the scenes planning, staff training, and numbers crunching. I love it all!

Thanks, Megan!

Introducing Gangly Sister

Who is Gangly Sister, and why did they declare 2014 the Year of the Girl? The company put out a video called 2014: The Year of the Girl, where they interview girls about their new year's wishes.

"It's just obvious to us. Everyone is so fed up with the media's bombardment of girls with pink unicorns and high-heels for toddlers," says Miriam Lottner, co-founder of Gangly Sister. "It was just a matter of time before we ladies took things into our own hands."

Taking things into their own hands is precisely what Gangly Sister is doing. The founders are parents, and they realized that they could simply produce their own content rather than wait for Hollywood to come around.

"It’s just like any startup," said Lottner. "We saw a problem and set out to solve it."

Gangly Sister will be coming out with the pilot for their animated series, Purple and Nine, later in January.

The Gangly Sister team is setting out to provide clean and funny entertainment for girls, and at the same time expose them to different types of technology. Co-founder Rebecca Rachmany says that there is nothing scary about technology, and that it's not just about coding.

"My favorite example of technology is the coating on chocolate-covered ice cream pops. When I was a kid, that coating used to crack into pieces, but thanks to technological developments, now you can enjoy that chocolate on the more expensive ice cream pops," explains Rachmany.

While that seems like a trivial example, it illustrates how conservative we are in our ideas of "technology." In fact, technology has made it possible to grow food in arid climates, treat diseases, recycle plastic, and even run faster. When you think about it, technology influences everything.

Gangly Sister emerged from the founders' frustration at having so few women in startups. While programs abound to encourage women at later stages in their live to learn to code or to get into technology companies, that's a fairly late stage in life.

The idea behind Gangly Sister is to catch kids at ages 8-12, when they are imagining what they would like to be when they grow up. In the Purple and Nine series, there are no bad guys or mean girls. It's all about two kids who just want to help out their friends, get along with their families, and have a great time. They just happen to use technological inventions to fix those problems.

To learn more, check out http://www.ganglysister.com.