Patrice Tanaka is a best-selling author, public speaker on business and life purpose, serial entrepreneur and co-founder of three award-winning, PR & Marketing agencies and the consultancy, Joyful Planet, focused on helping individuals and organizations discover and actively live their purpose to unleash greater success, fulfillment and joy in their personal lives, workplaces and communities. She is the co-author of Beat the Curve and Performance360, where she writes about life and organizational purpose. Patrice is also the author of Becoming Ginger Rogers…How Ballroom Dancing Made Me a Happier Woman, Better Partner and Smarter CEO, a book about her late-life passion for ballroom dancing and the lessons she learned.
Becoming Ginger Rogers is the story of one woman’s inspiring and uplifting journey to reclaim her life during the dispiriting days of New York City in the aftermath of 9/11, the unraveling of a successful business she co-founded with a dozen colleagues, and the death of her beloved husband after a long illness. Patrice Tanaka shares her very personal story of how at age 50 she took up ballroom dance lessons to satisfy a lifelong dream of dancing like Ginger Rogers and, in so doing, found her way to unimaginable joy.
This book is, in part, a memoir of a young Japanese-American girl born and raised in Hawaii who fulfilled her childhood dream of living in the Big Apple; a voyeuristic glimpse into the world of competitive ballroom dancing; and a business book about the lessons learned from ballroom, including how to close partner with others to co-found two, successively larger companies.