Intrepid entrepreneur dances to top of business competition

Rebecca Davis has earned a number of significant awards lately, including a Fulbright grant and top honors in Temple’s Business Plan Competition, run by the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Institute.

Everyone knows that it’s the movers and shakers who make the best business leaders. Rebecca Davis, however, took that to another level when she presented her idea to the Business Plan Competition sponsored by Temple’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Institute (IEI) this past semester.

Davis, a longtime dancer who studied ballet in Russia and currently takes private lessons at the Koresh School of Dance in Philadelphia, ended up winning the competition with her plan to create a local pre-professional dance-theater training program for youths aged 12-18.

“The Business Plan Competition at Temple is a great opportunity for me,” said Davis, who graduates today from the Fox School of Business and Management with a Bachelor’s of Business Administration—and a 4.0 GPA. “It bridges the gap between academics and the business community. Someone like me who’s trying to start a business can get exposure while still at a university.”

She, along with five other finalists, presented her plan earlier this month. For winning the competition, she received a prize of $6,000 cash, a trip to Mexico, and full access to the many services available from Temple’s Small Business Development Center.

And while Davis could incorporate her business next week thanks to the prize, she may have to put it on hold: She was also recently offered a Fulbright grant to study in Russia. She first visited there at 19 not knowing a word of the language. Since then, she has held two summer internships in Russia in addition to studying the Vaganova method of ballet under Boris Eifman, head of Eifman Ballet of St. Petersburg, and is proficient in Russian.

Growing up, Davis had planned to become a dance teacher, but in high school she started examining how she might broaden her aspirations into something bolder. While some people might be surprised that she chose business school instead of pursuing a degree in dance, Davis thought it a perfect fit.

“What drove me to a business degree is to produce the pieces I want to tell,” she said. “You can’t do that unless you own the company.”

She takes her choreography very seriously, largely because she sees her art as a powerful tool to get messages out in the world.

“I think the purpose of dance is to become a communication method for important social issues and historical events,” said Davis, who is particularly interested in how dance can communicate in an urban setting like Philadelphia. “That’s what I’d like my choreography to convey.

“I saw really important stories and ideas of individuals all across the country and world doing amazing things at such a young age,” she added, referring to her work and internship experiences with the New York International Ballet Competition and the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, among others. “But I began to realize that you can read about these amazing individuals and not see what happened, or not remember the story. With the arts—a great play, musical or dance—you’ll remember the message and the story of the people.”

For example, one of her pieces tells the story of an Amnesty International case in which a young child laborer in Pakistan was assassinated at age 20.

“It shocked me that someone my age had done these fantastic things,” Davis said. “I wrote a narrative piece using the story, put it to music and dance and performed it as a one-person show.”

Davis also makes a point not to obfuscate the story for art’s sake. She tries to convey stories literally, rather than in a conceptual way that leaves too much to interpretation.

“I use more spoken word and more multimedia than most traditional approaches,” she said, noting that this approach also attracts a younger audience. “The theater should be a stimulus for debate and discussion, and where we need to start that dialogue is with the social issues of our day. My hope is that increasing awareness and discussion about them through dance will lead to resolutions.”

A dual American-Canadian citizen who grew up in Canada, Davis started her studies at York University in Toronto. Despite her two full scholarships, she made the difficult decision to transfer because she wanted to come to the United States.

“I wanted to finish school in the States because I saw more opportunities to grow my business in the U.S.,” Davis said, noting that she also needed to get up to speed on American accounting standards. “Temple, and particularly Philadelphia, was a good fit for me because it’s not as competitive as New York, yet large enough for me to gain important business contacts and experience. Though I loved Toronto, relative to Philadelphia there are so many more opportunities for business and the arts here.”

And while she could have gone anywhere, Temple provided the unique combination of elements that made it particularly attractive to her.

“I needed an undergraduate business school that had a major in entrepreneurship, along with a school with a strong dance department,” Davis said. “That was impossible to find. Temple was one of about three schools in the U.S. that had what I was looking for.”

It turned out wonderfully for Davis, because Temple had everything in place to nurture her desire to promote social issues through choreography.

“Temple has been the perfect school for me,” said Davis, a nominee for the Rhodes/Marshall scholarship program. “It’s in Philadelphia, and it had the dance and the business honors classes. I feel like I’m part of the business community here. It’s given me a breadth of education I doubt I could get at other schools.”

That did not stop her from finding ways of augmenting Temple’s breadth—by starting a Russian club that has grown to 180 members representing 14 nationalities in just two years.

Student leadership, she said, allowed her to develop her managerial and marketing skills. She also has earned numerous other distinctions, including winning the League for Entrepreneurial Women Essay Competition in 2002 and induction into Beta Gamma Sigma Business Honors Student Association last spring.

As she looks ahead beyond graduation, Davis believes she already knows where the building blocks are for her dream.

“It feels like I’m getting close with my company,” she said. “I need to get the financing in place. I’ve had a lot of valuable internship experiences and made contacts in Philadelphia and New York, so now it’s a matter of transitioning these people from mentors to backers of my work.” — Helen H. Thompson and Ted Boscia