CEO MONTHLY / FEMALE CEO OF THE YEAR AWARDS 2025 4 Performing Arts CEO of the Year 2025 (Bulgaria): Victoria Dimitrova n a business landscape where structure and creativity often stand on opposite sides, VS DANCE StudioS emerges as the first creative organization in Bulgaria built on a corporate management model – a rare fusion of artistry, strategic thinking, and organizational discipline. At its core lies a visionary philosophy, that creativity can thrive within structure when led with empathy, vision and purpose. While many companies struggle to find balance between business efficiency and creative freedom, VS DANCE has become a model for how corporate logic can coexist with intuition and emotional intelligence, nurturing both innovation and human potential. This unique equilibrium did not happen by chance. Under the Dance is more than just exercise – it is expression, mindset, self-confidence, leadership, and so much more all rolled into one. Helping children and adults alike to unlock the endless string of benefits dance has to offer is Victoria Dimitrova, who founded VS DANCE StudioS – which is part of the wider VS DANCE BG Ltd. – back in 2009. Making dreams come true ever since, Victoria’s work has more than earned her the title of Performing Arts CEO of the Year 2025 (Bulgaria). We caught up with Victoria following this recognition for more on her great work at VS DANCE. I leadership of Victoria Dimitrova, Founder and CEO, the company has developed a management culture where systems and artistry support one another. Her approach demonstrates that leadership in creative industries requires not only operational acumen, but a deep psychological understanding of people – how they are inspired, how they communicate, and how they create. Through this synthesis, Victoria has built an organization where corporate strategy empowers creativity instead of suppressing it, and where intuition is treated as a key component of emotional intelligence – essential for decision-making, team cohesion, and innovation. The company Victoria founded more than 15 years ago today encompasses a number of divisions, of which VS DANCE StudioS – specialising in dance classes and stage performances – is just one. Taking a closer look at this, its flagship division, VS DANCE StudioS is more than just a dance studio. It is an educational environment centred around personal growth, goal setting, and driving belief in an individual’s potential. Its comprehensive suite of services reflects this at every level, and just some of the areas Victoria’s dance studio specialises in are custom choreography, crafting the first dance at a wedding, or creating routines for children’s birthday parties, as well as preparing students for their entrance exams to dance schools. The large studio space it boasts in Sofia – Studio VS DANCE – can also be rented out for music videos, film productions, and personal projects, which its team can support through their video and graphic design services. Here we start to see some of the other areas of the bigger VS DANCE BG Ltd. operation shine through, with VS Creative being the department for content and advertising that these services go through. As well as this, there is VS Talents – an artist management agency – and VS Clothes, a hip-hop clothing brand, both of which complement the vision of VS DANCE StudioS and make it something truly special in Bulgaria’s creative industries. Diving deeper into the origins of VS DANCE, Victora told us: “I established the organisation at the age of 20, without investors but with a clear mission: to create a sustainable educational and artistic structure that develops people not only as performers but as individuals with vision, discipline, and character.” Today, having developed alongside her business, Victoria is in charge of everything from strategic planning, marketing, and business development through to the creative side of the company, i.e. the dancing and choreography. Victoria is not just a choreographer, as she also sees herself as a mentor to those she teaches, helping them to blossom into both skilled dancers and exceptional human beings. This stems from her status as an ITCA-certified Business NLP Master Practitioner, meaning she can apply psychology, communication, and leadership principles to both the company itself and those she mentors. In combining this approach with the belief that art is key in developing people, VS DANCE sees discipline and talent converge to help drive growth. Whilst the world of performing arts is, at least on the surface, less of a maledominated industry than some of the others covered in this programme, the same gender stereotypes and generalisations which define the wider entrepreneurial landscape still exist. The challenge for many women – Victoria included – remains the same: to strike a balance between authority, authenticity, femininity, grace, strength, and resilience. However, being a leader is much more than this ‘leadership mastery’, as Victoria herself has come to recognise. “Strong vision and belief are essential in overcoming the resistance that often
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