From Dance Major to Salesforce to San Francisco REALTOR®:

My Winding Career Path (And Why My Grandmother Was Right)

My grandmother used to tell me I was going to be a Renaissance woman. For years, I had no idea what she meant. Honestly, I wasn't sure I loved the term. It sounded like a polite way of saying "she can't make up her mind."

Now I get it. And she was right.

Some people know exactly what they want to do. They study that thing in school, they build a career in that field, and that's their story: straight line, start to finish. My story could not be further from that. Here's the actual path, because I think it matters, especially if you're someone who's ever felt behind, scattered, or like you took the long way to where you're supposed to be.

It Started With Dance (and the Ocean)

My criteria for picking a college was simple: it had to be near the ocean and have a dance program. That's how I ended up at UC Santa Barbara as a dance major.

Partway through, I decided I wanted to study abroad, and at the time you couldn't do that as a dance major. So I switched to Global Studies and Spanish, lived in Barcelona for a year, and came back to the US completely fired up about political science. One of my professors at UCSB was a former ambassador, and on his encouragement I applied to the State Department.

I got placed as a Foreign Service intern at the US Embassy in the Netherlands, and worked there for about four months after college.

Back to San Francisco, Back to Dance

After the embassy, I came home to San Francisco and worked at a nonprofit think tank doing research and event planning for a few years. But something kept pulling me back to dance.

I moved up to Mill Valley and became the manager of Rocco Dance and Fitness. That studio holds a special place in my heart. The founder, Annie Rosenthal Parr, was a mentor to me long before I worked for her. I grew up dancing there, worked the front desk as a teenager, was her dance student, and even babysat her kids. I loved her then and I love her now.

The MBA That Led to Tech (Not Dance)

At Rocco, Annie and I started talking about franchising the dance school. I quickly realized I didn't know anything about business, so I went to USF here in San Francisco for my MBA.

Here's the thing about business school in San Francisco: no matter what you go in planning to do, it turns into tech, fast. I graduated with a focus in entrepreneurship and marketing and landed in tech startups almost immediately.

Fifteen Years in Tech Marketing

My path through tech looked like this:

• Voce Communications — my first job out of business school, at a tech PR firm
• PubMatic — my first true marketing role, at an ad tech startup
• InMobi — another ad tech company, this time in mobile advertising
• Salesforce — where I stayed for ten and a half years, growing through marketing, product marketing, and people management
• Cisco — the next chapter after Salesforce, took on a leadership role leading Platform Marketing during a period of company reinvention 
• Handshake — a startup, transitioning from an early career talent network (LinkedIn for Gen Z) to an AI based human data labeling company. This transition resulted in a layoff, and further propelled me to re-invent myself. 

Fifteen years. A lot of titles, a lot of teams, a lot of lessons about storytelling, positioning, and how people actually make decisions.

And Then, This Year, I Became a REALTOR®

This year, I realized I was done with that chapter. Not because anything went wrong. Just because something in me was ready for what's next.

So I got my real estate license, and I am genuinely so happy to be here.

Looking back, I don't think any of it was wasted. Dance taught me about discipline, performance, and community. The State Department and the think tank taught me how to navigate complex rooms and high-stakes situations. Running a dance studio taught me how to manage community and build something local that people love. Business school and fifteen years in tech taught me marketing, positioning, and how to tell a story that actually lands.

Real estate, it turns out, asks for every single one of those things at once.

Grandma, You Were Right

I am a Renaissance woman. I used to think that meant I was scattered. Now I think it meant I was collecting everything I'd need, one chapter at a time, for exactly this.

If you've ever felt like your path doesn't look like everyone else's, like you've zigzagged instead of climbed a ladder, I'd love to hear your story too. And if you're thinking about a move in San Francisco or Southern Marin, I'd love to help, win or lose, dance major to REALTOR® and everything in between.

Alexis Kushner is a licensed REALTOR® (DRE #02438773) with Vanguard Properties in San Francisco, and a lifelong Bay Area local based in the Castro.