Be Bold in Building Community

When Maggie Williams ’18 was a child growing up in Rome, New York, pictures of ballerinas on pointe lined the walls of her bedroom. Williams loves dance. A dual major in marketing and management and leadership on the Heights, she joined the Le Moyne Student Dance Company and even served as a choreographer for the troupe during her senior year. However, she did not envision that one day she would work off stage for one of the most prestigious dance companies in the world. Williams is the website marketing senior coordinator for Boston Ballet. It is a role that her 8-year-old self could only have dreamed of undertaking, combining her love of dance and community building in a single role.  

What Williams appreciates most about this work at the intersection of art and technology is how expansive and ever-evolving it is. No two days are the same. One afternoon she may be updating the Ballet’s website at the organization’s headquarters on Clarendon Street, while the next she may be at a video shoot with the company’s nearly 70 dancers. What’s more, artificial intelligence (AI) is playing a growing role in her work. Williams is spearheading the Ballet’s efforts to implement an AI model that will assist the organization in creating content across its departments, from marketing to fundraising to Boston Ballet School. 

The latter is a challenge that Williams is well-equipped to handle, thanks in part to the well-rounded Jesuit education she received at Le Moyne. Her classes in disciplines like philosophy and psychology taught her to “listen deeply, think critically and stay open to multiple perspectives,” which is vital in artistic and nonprofit spaces. She also grew through her work in helping to found Dolphin Tank, an annual event in which student entrepreneurs compete for funding to launch or grow their businesses. It gave her firsthand experience in creating something from the ground up — rallying people around a vision, managing logistics and pitching ideas. What’s more, it taught her that “if something doesn’t exist yet, you can create it.” 

When Williams was a child surrounded by images of dancers on the walls of her room, it’s likely that she could not have imagined that the artform would shape her future. There is no doubt that it has, though. The Le Moyne alumna is grateful for that, and she offered this advice to other young professionals, particularly those in creative fields: