10 questions. Dance Moves

• Author: Jenny B. Davis
• Pages: 12-13

COURTESY OF HARVARD LAW SCHOOL

Dance Moves

Harvard Law’s dean of students began as a ballerina before leaping into law

You danced professionally w ith

the Dance Theatre of Ha rlem for

four years but left it b ehind to go

to college and law school. How did

you make that tra nsition and why?

There was a moment when the fi lm

The Wiz was fi l ming, and a number

of Dance Theatre of Harlem dancers

were performing in it, a nd the company

went on hiatus. During that t ime, I had

applied to Barnard College a nd had

deferred. I come from a fami ly of edu-

cators—everyone has a c ollege degree.

My mother said, “Maybe you should just

call Barna rd and say you’ll be around

for a bit, and then if the company star ts

again, you can work your schedule ar ound it.” I started

at Barnard and fell in love w ith the school. When the

company started ba ck up again, I decided not to go back.

After gr aduation, I went straight to law school. No one

in my family was in t he theater—my parents’ friends

were all teachers, law yers, doctors and educators, so it

wasn’t a foreign thing for me to think about .

Tell me about your path to becoming a prose cutor.

There was a clinic star ted in my third year in law school

called the Child Advo cacy Clinic, and I thought, “Th is is

what I want to do.” I was thinki ng I’d work in legal a id,

but I had a friend who said, “You should be a prosecu-

tor because you have the perform ative nature of the job

and you are comfortable in your sk in.” I had already been

on stage much of my life! I joined the Brooklyn Dist rict

Attorney’s O ce in 1 984, and I tried rape and child abuse

cases. I loved the work, and I loved the job. When I say

loved, it is from the standpoint of being able to ma ke a

di erence in people’s lives. We worked in victims’ r ights,

and we helped advance changes i n how rape was under-

stood and prosecuted , like rape shield laws and having

trauma-informed law yers working with women and

children. I worked with the law yers who helped get

the laws changed to outlaw mar ital rape.

You eventually joined Columbia Universit y Law

School as the dean of st udents, where

you met David Stern, then t he commis-

sioner of the NBA, and la nded the job

of vice president of organ izational

development and human resourc es

at the NBA. How did that h appen?

David Stern was t he graduation

speaker, and I met him and he was

teasing me about how long his speech

would be. I said, “You know, you’re not

the show—parents want to see their

kids walk acr oss the stage, and I am not

paying overtime at Car negie Hall.” He

was impressed by that and a sked the

dean if I’d be interested in a job at the

NBA. I thought, “How many times a m I

going to get o ered a job in an ar ea I never would have

thought about?” When I talked to my da d, he said, “A re

you kidding me? You can’t not take this!”

What did you do for the NBA?

It was similar to being dea n of students: looking at

people and their lives and care er choices. It was an

amazing, ama zing time. The WNBA was sta rting, and I

ended up being its head of human resource s. The WNBA

is owned as a par tnership with the owners of the NBA

teams, so we had to c onstruct human resources for an

entire league inste ad of having every team runn ing as

its own business. We also sta rted the NBA store. I didn’t

know anything about re tail and what kind of HR struc-

tures you needed for that, a nd for a short time we created

NBA City at Universal St udios Orlando. I was there when

Golden State Warriors player Latrell Sprewel l choked his

coach. I still remember th inking, “If any other employee

came up and choked their boss in the o ce, what would

you do? Is that a human resources matt er? ”

Did the fact tha t you had been a young athlete help

you relate to the basket ball players?

Oh, completely. What was amazing wa s being part of

shaping orientation for incoming players. When you see

young men, particularly t hose whose families didn’t have

the resources like the fa mily I came from, get draft ed,

WHEN THE DANCE THEATRE OF HARLEM was founded in 1969, it did more than prioritize African-American

ballet dancers—it inspired them. That’s the e ect the company had on Marcia Lynn Sells, a young dance student

in Cincinnati. After attending a performance, she recalls seeing classical dancers who looked like her and who

made her believe that she could achieve her dream of becoming a professional ballerina. In 1976, Sells moved

to New York City and joined the Dance Theatre of Harlem under the direction of its co-founder, Arthur Mitchell.

Fast-forward four decades and Sells is now dean of students at Harvard Law School, and her legal career has

been as impressive and inspiring as any grand jeté.

Opening Statements

12 || ABA JOURNAL JANUARY 2018

10 QUESTIONS