BAND’s Best Leader of the Year Award is an esteemed honor for leaders with an extraordinary ability to band people together around a shared vision.
We are pleased to introduce you to one of our top finalists, Emily Robinson. Congratulations, Coach Emily!
Emily is a ballroom dance coach at Enlight Ballroom Studio in Cache Valley, Utah. Emily grew up learning competitive ballet, jazz, and hip-hop and joined Enlight to follow one of her friends when she was twelve.
Emily danced with Enlight Ballroom for five years before being invited to coach after high school. At first, she was hesitant to lead the other dancers, who were only a few years younger than her, and was worried she wouldn’t be respected as their teacher, but they were very receptive to her.
Emily is very passionate about being well rounded, a lesson she learned while she was a dancer herself. During high school, she participated in many extracurricular activities outside of dancing, including cheerleading, basketball, swimming, tennis, and theater, all while keeping up her grades.
Not long ago, Emily entered the local Miss America Pageant, where she was named Miss Cache Valley and invited to compete for the title of Miss Utah.
While she was running for Miss Utah, Emily was asked to come up with a platform to campaign behind. Emily’s platform was “Supporting Children by Strengthening Families” which sought to spread her belief that everyone deserves to have a strong family support system to help them grow.
Emily used her crown to get people in the community to pay attention, regardless of their background. During the campaign, Emily donated over 400 hours of community service to help inspire families to be more present for their children.
Just recently, Emily announced that she will be stepping down as Miss Cache Valley to focus more of her attention on coaching to pass on her passion to the next generation. For her final pageant, she invited her team to come and perform so she could share some of her pageant experience with them.
She tries to share her passion for being well rounded with her dancers and encourages them to pursue their passions and work on improving their grades. She invites them to ask her for help with homework if they’re struggling because she wants to make sure her dancers are succeeding in all aspects of their lives.
If they have to miss dance practice for something like marching band or a theater performance, she is very supportive of them and goes to their events whenever she can. She wants to make sure that they excel in everything they do, and not let anything slide by managing their time and developing good relationships.
“One of the greatest parts of being a coach is teaching kids life skills like grit. What’s a good situation, what’s a bad situation? That’s what helps kids find themselves.” — Coach Emily Robinson
Emily believes that it’s important to have a mentor that leads by example but is also willing to be your friend and be there for you. She has established strong trust with her students and encourages them to reach out whenever they need help. Last year, one of her students was feeling uncomfortable at a party and called Emily to come and pick her up late at night.
Even though she’s no longer a part of the Miss America pageant, she’s still very passionate about her “Strengthening Families” initiative. She’s working with a local organization to host a daddy-daughter dance for the Cache Valley community. Emily also put together a local shoe drive to donate shoes to children in a poor country in Africa, collecting over 12,000 shoes from the community.
In addition to her current role at the studio, she is now studying Communicative Disorders at Utah State University as a junior and is following her passion for medicine and working with kids.
“If I ever end up being a coach or teaching ballroom, I hope that I can do as good a job as Emily.” — Bridger Winward, Enlight Ballroom dancer
We are very pleased to honor Emily as one of our top nine 2018 Best Leaders of the Year. Her incredible contributions to her community are an inspiration to everyone here at BAND, and we hope that her story has inspired you!
Please be sure to check out all of the other amazing stories from our Finalists, and vote for who you think deserves to be named BAND’s 2018 Best Leader of the Year!
