Beth Maslinoff

Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth

“Former professional ballerina moving from the stage to strategy—rooted in grit and purpose.”

Hometown: Gainesville, FL

Fun Fact About Yourself: My childhood home was a cabin on stilts in a river that was sometimes only accessible by boat.

Undergraduate School and Major: Saint Mary’s College of California, Performing Arts

Most Recent Employer and Job Title: Ballet Memphis, Ballerina

What has been your first impression of the Tuck MBA students and alumni you’ve met so far. Tell us your best Tuck story so far. My first impression of Tuck goes way back to last year’s Women in Business Conference (now Discover Tuck: WIB), which was a fantastic experience. Quite a few of my now fellow T’27s were there and that really was the beginning of some of my strongest friendships here. The conference was a crash course in some of the greatest hits of Tuck culture, like Band Party, Small Group Dinners, and TuckTalks. The reputation of Tuck’s students and alumni precedes itself, and I’ve been amazed to see how much it lives up to the hype. All the way from prospective student to new admit, the personal outreach from students, admissions staff, and alumni was phenomenal.

Aside from your classmates, what was the key part of Dartmouth Tuck’s MBA programming that led you to choose this business school and why was it so important to you? A key initiative that drew me was the way Tuck structures their six centers. I knew from the get-go that I was seeking cross-disciplinary exposure, and the centers allow for a lot of flexibility. The staff of the centers genuinely love brainstorming about project ideas and are eager to help facilitate collaboration across centers or even the larger Dartmouth community.

What excites you the most about coming to live in Hanover? What is the one activity you can’t wait to do? Small towns had never really appealed to me before, but I can say that I’m now a convert. The community is so welcoming; I had only been here maybe a week before I started being greeted on the street by people I had just met. I was based in the Pacific Northwest for many years, and the Upper Valley reminds me a lot of the areas I grew to love out there. That said, this native Floridian is not well-versed in winter sports and I’m looking forward to embracing Tuck traditions like Winter Carnival, wiping out in tripod hockey, and yard sale-ing my way down the bunny hills of Dartmouth Skiway.

What course, club or activity excites you the most at Dartmouth Tuck? I’ve been interested in the Center for Business, Government & Society since I was a prospective student, and I’m excited for the related Policy, Politics, and Business elective. The interplay of policy and the private sector has been an underlying theme in my experience with labor negotiations in the performing arts and is core to my interest in cross-sector study.

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far: Related to my previous answer, I had the opportunity to be part of an organizing campaign and the subsequent negotiations for the first unionized professional dance contract in the state of Tennessee. Getting to participate in the crafting of such an exhaustive document from scratch was a huge collaborative endeavor that was a great lesson in conflict negotiation, coalition building, leadership, and strategy. So much of the life of a ballet dancer is made up of fleeting, impermanent moments of live performance, so to work on producing a contract framework that subsequent generations of dancers will get to take ownership of and refine was a true privilege.

What do you hope to do after graduation (at this point)? I’m hoping to bridge my MBA into a realm where I get to exercise my curiosity and appetite for continued learning. Coming from a non-traditional background, there is so much to absorb in a short amount of time in the MBA program, so I’d love to connect my next career to a field that fosters ongoing development. My love of the arts is lifelong, however, and I hope to be able to eventually contribute to its future by bringing experience gained from working in other industries back into the sector.

What advice would you give to help potential applicants gain admission into Dartmouth Tuck’s MBA program? At the beginning of my MBA journey, I wrestled with how to tell the story of my unusual background. I was tempted to try to mold it into what I thought admissions would want to hear, downplaying some of my more unique attributes. Luckily, I found the resources of the Forté Foundation, where I was encouraged to lean into the authenticity of my experiences. With Tuck’s relatively small class size, they truly value your individuality and are committed to crafting a dynamic cohort. When they say they want to get to know you in the application process, believe them. Tuck is strongly a people-first program, so connect with admissions, students, and alumni and build those relationships. Do the work to dig deep and know who you are so that you can lead with your most authentic self.

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