Her passion was first kindled through her family roots in Barbados, where she learned calypso and soca dancing, and it grew during formal dance training at the Harlem School of the Arts. While majoring in economics at Bucknell, she performed and choreographed with the Bucknell Dance Company. Today, when Sobers is not busy with her job as an assistant director for residence life at the University of Texas at Austin and her side business in leadership training, she teaches dance and appears with companies that perform tango, salsa and bachata.
She also makes a point that she often demonstrates in her own dance performances: The person who leads doesn’t have to be male. It’s one way Sobers challenges preconceptions that the person in authority has a certain skin tone, gender identity or body image.
There is no secret sauce to leadership, she says: “It will be specific to each person.” But one bit of her leadership advice can apply to anyone: “Know yourself and continue to seek the understanding of others.”