How UrbanStems CEO Meenakshi Lala’s Double Life as a Professional Dancer Helps Her as an Executive

Welcome to Out of Office, a recurring series that explores the extracurricular activities of entrepreneurs–from passion projects to full-blown side gigs–and why what they do in their downtime helps them level up as business leaders.

Dancers spend their careers training and working behind the scenes to nail high-stakes performances. That might be why Meenakshi Lala is well-suited to leading a company that sees demand spike around special occasions. The longtime executive joined the remote floral delivery startup UrbanStems as chief operating officer in 2022, before stepping into the position of CEO the following year. Since, she’s helped the 10-year-old business secure $5 million in Series C extension funding to expand its same-day delivery service into new markets and have its best Mother’s Day sales to date. All the while, Lala has made time for the side passion that she says helps her lead with energy and excitement.    –As told to Rebecca Deczynski

I’m a trained Indian classical dancer–I’ve danced from a very young age. I was born and raised in India, and when I moved to the U.S., I paused for a few years because I didn’t know where to go to find the right dance school or company. Within the Indian classical dance space, there are a lot of different lineages and styles. The type of dance I specialize in is called kathak, which translates to “storytelling.” It’s considered the closest thing to ballet in the Indian classical dance space. Through a friend, I was introduced to my guru in New York, and I joined her dance company, which I’ve been with for the past 15 years.

I’m also the co-founder and lead volunteer of an organization called the New York Kathak Festival, which my friend–a fellow kathak dancer–and I created as a platform for both new and renowned artists in the space. There are kathak festivals around the world, but New York didn’t have one, and that felt like a miss because the city is such a melting pot of art and culture. We created it in 2019, and in June, we had our fourth flagship festival. We have artists who travel from around the country and all around the world, and we put on a robust three-day experience. It’s a lot of work, a lot of planning, and a lot of grant writing–nonprofits are not easy to run, but it’s very fulfilling and a lot of fun.

The three months leading up to the festival is when a lot of the rigorous planning comes into place. It’s a lot of multitasking–taking time out in the mornings, the evenings, and the weekends. We’ve done this for years, so now we have a pretty standard playbook. Throughout the year, we talk to artists and potential sponsors and apply for grants.