Determination. Focus. Flexibility. These traits not only drive New York City Ballet dancers to the top of their profession but also help them thrive as students at Fordham, where many gain the education to launch a fulfilling second career when they retire from the stage.
Just ask Jonathan Stafford, the company’s artistic director.
He’s one of dozens of current and former City Ballet dancers who completed much if not all of their coursework while performing full time with the world-renowned company one block north of Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus. Stafford retired as a dancer in 2014 and, two years later, earned a Fordham degree in organizational leadership that he says has given him “valuable tools and resources” to lead the company’s artistic staff.
Of his 94 current City Ballet dancers, 25 have graduated from Fordham’s School of Professional and Continuing Studies (PCS), eight are currently enrolled, and several more recently submitted applications.
Fordham Magazine caught up with four former City Ballet dancers who have used their Fordham education to create successful—and perhaps surprising—second careers.
Dr. Savannah Lowery, PCS ’15
Majors: Mathematics and Economics
Second Career: Physician (Obstetrics and Gynecology)
While Savannah Lowery started taking ballet lessons at the age of 3, she was also “raised in a hospital,” she says, thanks to two physician parents. After enrolling at Fordham in 2008, she initially figured she’d use her math and economics majors to prepare her for a future in finance. But once she got some encouragement that she wouldn’t be too old to begin a second career as a doctor, Lowery was determined to follow in her parents’ footsteps.
She stepped off the City Ballet stage in 2018, three years after earning her Fordham degree, and earned a medical degree at the New York Institute of Technology’s College of Osteopathic Medicine on Long Island in 2024. She is now a resident OB-GYN at NewYork-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital, a field she gained particular interest in while dancing. “In my generation, women started having children while dancing professionally,” she says. “And I found myself wanting to hear their birth stories.”
And while her second career comes with just as much pressure and as many long days as her first, Lowery says it’s just as fulfilling.
“I’m super grateful that I found two things that have made me extremely happy in my life,” she says. “I think every dancer should find something else that they think would make them just as happy as dancing and to hold onto it.”
Delia Peters, FCLC ’85
Major: Middle East Studies
Second Career: Litigation Attorney
Delia Peters began dancing with the New York City Ballet in 1963 and enrolled at Fordham in the early 1980s, when far fewer dancers decided to pursue a college degree—or anything else—outside of dance. A voracious reader who always enjoyed school, the Brooklyn-born, Queens-raised Peters knew that college would be part of her plan for a second act.
She majored in Middle East studies and, right after earning her Fordham degree in 1985, enrolled at Columbia Law School, balancing those classes with her role in the City Ballet corps until she retired the next year. When she got her law degree in 1988, she set out on a long, successful career as an attorney, representing companies in the aviation and nautical sectors—and even her former employer, the New York City Ballet.
“Fordham gave me a richer life,” Peters says. “When you’re a dancer, you go where you’re told, you do what you’re told, and for how long. Suddenly at Fordham, people were asking me what I thought. It was a revelation. It changed my life.”
Cameron Dieck, PCS ’17
Major: Economics
Second Career: Investment Banking and Private Equity
Cameron Dieck is a planner by nature. So, after starting at the New York City Ballet in 2007, he wasted little time—just a year—before he began “chipping away” at a college degree at Fordham. As a mathematically inclined child of two physicians, Dieck was drawn to studying economics at Fordham, hoping to set himself up for a finance career in New York after his ballet days were behind him. And he did just that.
Just a week after his final City Ballet performance in June 2018, Dieck began a job as an investment banking associate at Credit Suisse, where he stayed for three years. From there, he became a vice president of investment at J.P. Morgan, and just this past December, he began his current role as a vice president of private equity at Goldman Sachs’ Petershill Partners. At Petershill, which provides capital to alternative asset managers, Dieck says much of his job involves “getting to know different managers, assessing their track record, and making some judgments about whether we should be spending time to invest in them.”
For both Dieck and his wife, Unity Phelan, a 2021 Fordham graduate who is still a principal dancer with City Ballet, studying at Fordham allowed them to plan for the future with a new level of confidence.
“We’re grateful to have a college experience and for what that college experience has provided for us,” he says. “I’m so proud to have been a dancer. My wife is so proud to be a dancer. But we’re also very proud to say that it doesn’t define who we are and what our capabilities are.”
Gwyneth Muller, PCS ’15
Major: English
Second Career: Arts Management and Consulting
Gwyneth Muller finished her senior year of high school and became a full-time company member at the City Ballet in 2000. Almost immediately, she realized she missed being a student. “Academics grounded me and gave me something else to focus on,” she says. “And I realized it was going to be really important for my life to not be entirely centered around dance.”
She enrolled at Fordham in 2002 and decided on an English major. Being immersed in literature and drama helped Muller realize she wanted to continue working in the arts, and after graduating in 2015 and retiring from the City Ballet the next year, she began a dual-degree graduate program at Yale that earned her both an M.F.A. in theater management and an M.B.A.
Today, she is a performing arts management consultant at A.D. Hamingson & Associates, working with clients like the Lake Placid Center for the Arts, the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, and the Seagle Festival on capital campaign management, strategic planning, and development. She is also a producer with SCENE, an arts event production company with opera singer Anthony Roth Costanzo. She credits her education at Fordham with opening her eyes to the paths available to her.
“I was growing as a person,” she says of her time as a student. “I was becoming more well-rounded, opening myself up to new ways of thinking and new texts, taking multidisciplinary courses. I was applying myself, I was exploring, I was learning what I wanted to do. And then when I graduated, I didn’t just feel like I had a backup plan. I felt like I had just really set myself up as a human being ready to pursue other options.”
A Welcoming Academic Home for Dancers
New York City Ballet dancers bring a seriousness and sense of purpose to their college education, and they also express a high level of satisfaction with their experience at Fordham, according to a study conducted by Fordham psychology professor Harold Takooshian, Ph.D., and 2024 Fordham graduate Lilian Zeller. The dancers they contacted specifically gave high marks to faculty availability, helpfulness of deans, and campus location. Among City Ballet’s ranks, Fordham is also well known for helping dancers make a college degree a reality, from convenient class schedules to discounted tuition rates.
