Zaira Ximena Pulido

DEVELOPMENT COORDINATOR

LBV's incoming Development Coordinator has a unique combination of business skills and professional dance experience, making her well qualified to oversee the company's growth and tell its story.

A Colombian native, Zaira trained in classical ballet, modern, contemporary techniques. She earned a Master Degree in Dance Research at CENIDID Danza de México and has training in Colombian Pacific Folklore. She is certified by numerous international bodies in yoga, mindfulness and somatic movement education. She is interested in childhood, and her master thesis Inhabited by the moon: Discovering the unknown dance of children under the label of attention deficit disorder presents a new approach to understanding childhood ADHD.

Zaira has danced professionally with the companies Kalamo Danza Contemporanea, NELQP, and JAMZA Collective Cuerpo en Movimiento. As a choreographer, she created the play Nada es Lo Que Parece (Nothing is as it seems) and adapted it in 2013 for contemporary dance festivals at the Teatro Libelula Dorada (Golden Dragonfly) and the Acto Latino theater in Bogota. Earlier, she was a finalist in the University of Bogota's first choreographic contest, with an original work Senti-mentalmente, which she danced herself. Her work As I Cry premiered in the festival Move your Senses in 2016, and Armadura Rosa (Pink Armor) premiered at Acto Latino Theater in 2018.

Zaira has more than 18 years of experience practicing law, with degrees from the Pontifical University Javeriana and the University of the Andes and a specialization in corporate law. As a corporate attorney and external consultant, Zaira has advised various national and international companies; has launched start-up businesses in advertising, telecommunications, franchising, construction, retail and healthcare. She has assisted companies of all sizes with incorporation, business structuring, spin-offs, mergers and global sale of assets and liabilities.

Zaira has worked as interpreter, creator, and researcher. These varied experiences impart an interdisciplinary and humanistic point of view, using her own experience as a creative laboratory. This includes her extensive non-profit work. She has worked with children, youth, and senior citizens, designing and executing projects in which she fosters spaces of personal self-inquiry combining dance, yoga, mindfulness and various body techniques. Her project for the Mayor of Bogota, The territory of my body: Children explore the world through movement engaged more than 120 children and won a grant from the Ministry of Culture in 2013, and was expanded to include more than 130 children from the Municipality of Tumaco, Nariño.

Zaira's unique combination of skills will be put to use in her new role as LBV's Development Coordinator, in which she will be responsible for strategic planning, grant management, negotiation with presenters, donor and public relations, educational program expansion, and talent acquisition.