Proud University of Oregon alumna, Julia Vickers, is back in the Beaver State after spending eight years in New York City leading the marketing strategy and activities of a nonprofit dance company.
Last September, she assumed the role of Director of Communications for UO’s College of Education. “It has been fun to be back!” she says. “It has been great. I have a wonderful team here.”
Originally from Corvallis, Julia grew up dancing. She started in a modern dance-focused program at age three. “It began as something I simply loved doing,” she recalled. “You build relationships in a unique way when you are dancing with people. You make a physical and emotional connections with the people and that was a big draw.”
When she started looking into colleges, she knew she wanted to continue dancing but she also wanted to study English. She ultimately decided to enroll at UO’s School of Music and Dance because it provided the opportunity to double major in dance and comparative literature. She also valued the proximity to her hometown.
Photo: Julia dancing at UO in piece by Walter Kennedy.
During her time at the SOMD, her interest in dance became more nuanced. She opened the door to further exploration of choreography and teaching in a way she had not before. "It wasn't just about dancing because it's fun,” she said. “It became more critical.” She also started writing about dance. Through the interdisciplinary nature of the comparative literature degree, she wrote about pieces of dance rather than literature for her senior project.
After graduating in 2012, she and three of her close friends spontaneously moved to New York City together. The first month, they crowded into a one-bedroom apartment they found as a sublet on Craigslist. “We were constantly stubbing our toes on everyone's suitcases!” she laughed. “To this day, I still think of it as the bravest, craziest decision I have ever made. And I think my friends who were there would say the same. Enduring that together speaks to the kind of relationships you make when you are in SOMD.”
She worked several jobs across the city to get by in the beginning. “I think that experience of hustling around to three different jobs a day while also taking dance classes was a really cool way to learn about the city because I had four commutes every day to navigate,” Julia said.
Photo: Julia dancing in NYC in a piece by Emily Smith
At one point she was a nanny while also working as an administrative assistant for a Leonidas Belgian Chocolates franchise. “It was led by this very eccentric French man,” she remembered fondly. “I would do this administrative work and then I would drink espresso and eat chocolate with him all day. It was very funny.”
Then, she found an internship at Gibney Dance. Working 10 hours a week, she arrived in a moment of transition. Gibney only had about 10 employees, but they had also recently acquired a space in lower Manhattan that effectively doubled their number of studios. It also provided a theater for the company for the first time. “It was a really exciting time for the organization,” she said. “I came in at this moment where they were launching a large, professional class program, and producing and curating shows for the first time ever.”
Through this experience, she was afforded many chances to prove herself by taking on huge responsibilities and challenges. Over eight years, she had several promotions and eventually became the Director of Marketing. She built and led a multi-functional team to manage the communications, content strategy, video, and audience productions of what eventually became a major thriving nonprofit. She now looks back on her time there as an organic period of growth that coincided with the growth of the nonprofit itself.
After a decade in NYC, she and her husband, Daniel, decided it was time to leave New York City. The Oregon lifestyle and the desire to be closer to family back in Corvallis drove the move, and the pandemic allowed her to work remotely for Gibney. Julia and Daniel made the cross-country trek at the end of 2021. “It is so nice being around family, to have a yard!” she said. “We are also getting back into hiking, camping, and all that outdoorsy stuff we could not do in New York City”
Photo: Julia with her husband, Daniel
After working remotely for some time, an open position at UO’s College of Education piqued her interest. In September 2022, she was hired as the Director of Communications for the school. In her role, she provides strategic leadership for the College’s external communications including social media, website development, content strategy, branding, and digital marketing.
While her profession is not in the dance world anymore, the job itself has several similarities to her position at Gibney. “It has felt like working at a nonprofit in that people are here because they care about the work that is happening in a genuine way, which just makes coming to work a lot more inspiring,” she says. The mission-driven environment has also been a positive attribute. She believes strongly in promoting things like the arts, or now, research and education, as opposed to products, for example. It is also similar in the sense that the overall goal of her current position is to communicate complex ideas succinctly, but also in a way that honors the complexity and the depth of work being done and is accessible to people.
Julia lives in Portland with Daniel and their two cats. Currently, she is discovering how to incorporate dance into her life and determine the role it will have. “I think I wanted a little bit of a break from that world,” she says. “I was so steeped in the community, which was great! But I am also curious about what will change about my relationship with the art form now that it is not my professional obligation to be in it all the time and rediscovering what interests me outside of what I am paid to do.”