Board

Julia Sandwith has lived in Fort Walton Beach since 2007 and is currently the President of the Board of Directors for the Northwest Florida Ballet. She has been a board member since 2015. Julia developed her love of ballet while dancing with the Lincoln Midwest Ballet Company, a pre-professional ballet company in Lincoln, NE. As a teenager, she had the opportunity to perform leading roles such as Clara, Snow Queen, and The Sugar Plum Fairy in the Nutcracker, as well as Princess Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty. She attended summer dance programs with The Boston Ballet School and St. Louis Ballet. She was a member of The University Dance Company at the University of Kansas (under the direction of Jerel Hilding of The Joffrey Ballet) while pursuing her degree in Exercise Science. She utilized the discipline from her ballet training and her love of science to earn her master’s degree in Physician Assistant Studies from the University of Nebraska Medical Center in 2000.

Since then, she has worked as a physician assistant and has gained extensive experience in surgery (Cardiothoracic) at The Mid-America Heart Institute in Kansas City, MO and The Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN as well as internal medicine (Cardiology) at Broward General Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale, FL. She is currently working for Dr. Eleanor McCain and Dr. Sandra Hanson. Julia is a current member of Impact100 and has served on the Board of Directors for the Montessori Learning Center of Fort Walton Beach. In her spare time, Julia dances classical ballet in the adult ballet class at NFB and spends time with her husband Eric, and her children Hannah, Adelaide, and Crawford.

Bob Saxer is a lifelong resident of the Emerald Coast, witnessing the area’s growth and changing since moving to the coast as a youth. Bob is a 1975 graduate of Choctaw High School. A graduate from Spring Hill College in Mobile, Bob received an MBA from Loyola University in New Orleans where he met his wife, Elia, and began a 34-year career in Banking and Finance. Over the past three decades, Bob has been involved in financing multiple premier Commercial and Residential communities along the Emerald Coast.

Bob’s lifetime of local knowledge, 34 years of firsthand experience in development finance, and experience in the local real estate market provides his clients with unique advantages in the sale and purchase of Commercial and Residential real estate. Bob along with his wife, Elia of 36 years, are active in the local community. Bob currently serves as President of the Board of the Northwest Ballet, and Elia is an accomplished, galleried artist who is active in Okaloosa Public Arts and the Women Artists Network.

Todd Eric Allen is the Artistic Director/CEO of the Northwest Florida Ballet. He grew up in Fort Walton Beach, Florida and began his training in classical ballet at the age of 14 with Bernadette Clements. One year later he received a scholarship to attend the Joffrey Ballet School in New York City, where he studied for five consecutive years; he attended Virginia Intermont College as a scholarship student and was awarded a Dance Magazine Scholarship in 1985 to the Choreographer’s Conference in Geneva, New York.

Mr. Allen has danced with the Louisville Ballet, Boston Ballet and Les Grands Ballets Canadiens and has performed as a guest artist and teacher throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe. He has also had the honor of performing at the prestigious Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C., on two separate occasions, for Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton. Allen has an extensive background in the classics and Balanchine ballets, and has performed featured roles in ballets by Elisa Monte, Twyla Tharp, Mark Morris, Nacho Duato, James Kudelka, Hans Van Manen and Lucinda Hughey. In May of 2000 Mr. Allen was one of fourteen dancers asked to perform in Ocean Dance 2000 featuring Mikhail Baryshnikov and the White Oak Dance Project. In 2004 he was invited to perform with the Broadway cast in the Tony Award winning Musical, Movin’ Out, choreographed and directed by Twyla Tharp, music by Billy Joel.

He has choreographed 30 original works and classical ballets and 8 operas, has taught at The USA International Ballet Competition and many master classes and workshops in the US and internationally and has served on the jury of NBA Ballet’s Japanese National Ballet Competition in Tokyo, Japan.

In the summer of 1995 Todd returned to his hometown of Fort Walton Beach, Florida as Artistic Director/CEO of the Northwest Florida Ballet. Over the past 20 years, he has committed himself to his community by developing young minds and bodies through innovative dance education programs, creating an awareness of dance in Northwest Florida and exposing his audiences to a variety of classical and contemporary works. In 2003 Mr. Allen received the Cox Bravo Champion of the Arts Award in Northwest Florida for his work in establishing the NFB Académie, a free academic and artistic education elementary and middle school. He has also received the Elvie DeMarko Dance Achievement Award from The Arts Council of Northwest Florida and has served on various grant panels in the state of Florida for the Division of Cultural Affairs and the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation in Baltimore, Md. His groundbreaking work in arts education was featured in Dance Teacher magazine (Nov, 2004) and in Teacher Magazine, a Department of Education publication (May 2005). The Northwest Florida Ballet is now one of the largest and most respected arts organizations in Northwest Florida and has received national recognition for its innovative programs.

In 1992 while dancing with Boston Ballet Mr. Allen choreographed his first ballet, IYANU, on dancers from the company for a performance benefiting the Boston Ballet Dancer’s Career Transition Fund. Blue Tango, a tribute to Astor Piazzolla and collaboration with Argentine composer Claudio Ragazzi, once again highlighting the talents of Boston Ballet Dancers and featuring a live tango quintet, followed this first work. After the premier performance Christine Temin of the Boston Globe described Mr. Allen as “a choreographer of genuine talent”. Allen went on to create works for Festival Ballet of Rhode Island, the dancers of Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, Mobile Ballet, Sarasota Ballet, Chattanooga Ballet, Ruth Mitchell Dance Theater, Pensacola Opera, Pensacola Symphony, Mobile Opera and his own company, Northwest Florida Ballet. Allen has since been described as “one of the most original and exciting choreographers I know” by Fernando Bujones.

In the summer of 1995 Todd Eric Allen was invited to return to his hometown of Fort Walton Beach, Florida as Director of the Northwest Florida Ballet. In the nine years he has held the position of Artistic Director, Allen has committed himself to his community by developing young minds and bodies through innovative dance education programs, creating an awareness of dance in Northwest Florida and exposing his audiences to a variety of classical and contemporary works. In 2003 Mr. Allen received the Cox Bravo Champion of the Arts Award in Northwest Florida for his work in establishing the NFB Académie, a free academic and artistic education elementary school located in the NFB studios. His groundbreaking work in arts education was featured in Dance Teacher magazine (Nov, 2004) and in Teacher Magazine, a Department of Education publication (May 2005). In 2005 he accepted a 3-month engagement to perform in the Broadway hit, Movin’ Out. He served as an instructor at the 2006 USA International Ballet Competition in Jackson, Mississippi.