Lauren Brown (@lobro443 on Instagram) is a Brooklyn-born, Duke grad with a passion for brand insights, digital strategies, and challenging the body and mind through exercise.

She is a retired professional ballerina, who performed with The Pennsylvania Ballet and New York City Ballet at Lincoln Center before receiving her degree in Psychology at Duke. She was also a State and National Yoga Champion (#1 in MA-2015; #21 in USA-2015).

In 2015, she and her team competed in the UBS & OpenIDEO Challenge and was a winner for their project called UnBroke.

So what will you get out of this episode? Inevitably you'll learn a few things about Brand Planning and Marketing. More importantly, this is a story about change. What is it's like for someone to transition from professional ballet (or the performing arts) to a 9-5? Why did Lauren make this decision and how has her life changed since then?

Show Notes:

• [05:20] With so many titles attached to yourself, how do you introduce yourself?
• [07:05] How old were you when you worked on the street asking marketing questions and surveys?
• [08:05] What made you decide to stop dancing and pursuing other aspects of life? How was the transition from being a professional dancer to figuring out what's out there?
• [10:00] How prone are you to injuries? How much recovery time did you have between shows?
• [14:50] How does your beauty and your training helped you in the professional world?
• [19:10] How was your transition from being a dancer with a very active lifestyle to a sedentary advertiser? What advice would you share with other people?
• [23:15] What are some of the things a dancer need to watch out for? I.e. setbacks, liabilities, etc.
• [25:15] How has your experience been as a strategist?
• [27:00] What is the IDEO project about  and how it started?
  • [33:15] What was delivered to the IDEO project?
  • [37:50] What's the current status of the project?
• [40:20] How did you get into Yoga and Yoga competition?