Sasha De Sola
Senior leaders are asked to perform at their highest level on days when their bodies, their teams or their markets are working against them. Most organisations train for the strategy and underinvest in the discipline of staying composed when the conditions stop cooperating. The result is leadership that looks competent in stable conditions and frays under live pressure.
Sasha De Sola is a Principal Dancer at San Francisco Ballet who speaks to leaders about composure, recovery and creative discipline under sustained performance pressure.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Sasha De Sola
- Two decades of live, unedited high-stakes performance at one of the world’s top ballet companies, with the recovery patterns and pre-performance discipline that go with it.
- A perspective on creative work as a managed practice, not an inspiration: rehearsal, mentorship and craft repetition as the actual mechanism behind so-called artistry.
- Credibility on resilience earned through specific recoveries, including injury and the prolonged shutdown of live performance during the pandemic, not abstract theory.
- An inaugural fellow of San Francisco Ballet’s Raising Leaders programme, currently being developed as a future arts leader through executive coaching and an international placement at the Royal Swedish Ballet.
- A bilingual Venezuelan American voice on belonging, mentorship and the long arc from selective mutism in childhood to lead casting on a global stage.
Biography highlights
- Principal Dancer, San Francisco Ballet (2017 to present); named Diane B. Wilsey Principal Dancer in 2020.
- Trained at the Kirov Academy of Ballet, Washington D.C., on full merit scholarship, and at the Paris Opera Ballet School.
- BA in Performing Arts, Summa Cum Laude, Saint Mary’s College of California; completed Harvard Business School’s Crossover Into Business programme.
- Inaugural fellow, San Francisco Ballet’s Raising Leaders artist-development programme (2024 to 2026), with a placement at the Royal Swedish Ballet under Nicolas Le Riche.
- Medallist at Varna, World and USA International Ballet Competitions.
- Co-founder of The Ascendant, a charitable initiative supporting Dancin Power and San Francisco Ballet; board member, Dancin Power; advisory board, Pointe Magazine.
Biography
A dancer who has carried lead roles in Swan Lake, Giselle and The Sleeping Beauty does not get there on talent. She gets there on the discipline of repeating small corrections until the body holds them under stage lights, with an audience watching, on a night when the knee is not quite right. That is the territory Sasha De Sola speaks from.
She was named an apprentice at San Francisco Ballet in 2006, joined the corps in 2007, was promoted to soloist in 2012 and to Principal Dancer in 2017. In 2020 she was appointed the Diane B. Wilsey Principal Dancer, one of the company’s named principal positions. Her training is classical: the Kirov Academy in Washington D.C. on full merit scholarship, with a 2004 scholarship to the Paris Opera Ballet School and medals at Varna, World and USA International Ballet Competitions.
The intellectual frame she brings to leadership audiences was built deliberately. She graduated Summa Cum Laude from Saint Mary’s College of California with a BA in Performing Arts and completed Harvard Business School’s Crossover Into Business programme in 2022. In 2024 she was named one of two inaugural fellows of San Francisco Ballet’s Raising Leaders programme, a two-year curriculum that pairs executive coaching with an international placement shadowing Nicolas Le Riche at the Royal Swedish Ballet.
What she gives a room is the practical content of staying composed when the conditions move. Recovery from injury. Performing through the prolonged closure of live theatre. The long mentorship work that, away from the stage, sits behind every confident debut. A Venezuelan American who was diagnosed with selective mutism as a child, she also speaks credibly on belonging and on the slow craft of building a voice in a setting that initially feels foreign.
Key speaking topics
- Composure and recovery under sustained performance pressure
- Creative discipline as a managed practice
- Mentorship and craft development across long careers
- Resilience after injury and prolonged disruption
- Cross-cultural identity and belonging in high-performance settings
- Leadership lessons from elite artistic environments
Ideal for
- Leadership offsites and senior-team retreats focused on performance under pressure
- CHRO and people-leader conferences on talent development, mentorship and craft
- Women’s leadership programmes and ERG events on resilience and belonging
- Cultural, arts and philanthropic audiences seeking a credible artist-leader voice
Audience outcomes
- A working vocabulary for what composure looks like in practice, not as a trait
- Specific examples of how recovery from setback is structured, not improvised
- A more honest read on what mentorship costs and what it produces in elite environments
- A counterweight to the language of “talent” with the language of repeated craft