With her supportiveness and encouragement towards her dancers, Meghan Williams has established great management and exposure to creativity as a coach of Riordan High School’s dance team. She also expresses her love and support for her new role as a mother, balancing being a mother, dance team coach, and English teacher.

 She attended Foothill High School in Pleasanton and was involved in Colorguard with her high school’s award winning band. She did competitive dance outside of school in styles of hip hop, jazz and ballet. 

Balancing schoolwork, an outside job at a daycare, and extracurricular activities enforced her time management, as well as her motivation to go to dance and colorguard practices and performances. Looking back, she wished she took more time to focus on herself and spend time with friends because she was busy in high school with her extracurriculars and schoolwork. 

Williams attended St. Mary’s College in Moraga, California, where she graduated with a double major in English and dance. She enjoyed her college experience where she was a part of the dance program they offered. With this program, she had to be dedicated as she attended practices and educational dance classes. 

Besides dance, her career focus is on teaching English to students. She has been teaching English since she was 22 years old, first at Concord High School for six years, then Las Lomas High School in Walnut Creek for two years and now Riordan High School since 2023. The 2025-2026 school year marks 10 years of teaching and it’s her third year teaching English at Riordan. 

When the opportunity for starting up the dance team at Riordan came up, Williams agreed to be the moderator for the team. 

“Making sure what is really important to me from my college experience, that students are the focal point of leadership. As a dance coach of management and safety, I wanted a creativity component from students,” Williams said. 

Williams is Riordan’s dance team coach, which means she is in charge of management and safety, such as organizing their performance schedule, managing uniforms, expressing behavior standards and rules, and communication between other directors at Archbishop Riordan.

Her goal of the dance team is for her students to present their talent and dedication, as well as their creativity aspects in choreographies. The dance team expresses the school spirit at Riordan, bringing the school alive with dance. 

“Being on the dance team with Ms. Williams has made me feel more confident of my dance skills and myself by always supporting us and being there for us,” said dance team member Isabella Dudum ’27.

“She is our biggest supporter in many ways,  always advocating for us to perform at events. She helps us with coordinating uniforms, and supports us at practices. She’s like a dance mom to us, really caring and charismatic,” said dance team member Eva Chamorro ’27.

Some advice for dancers is “To not give up on dance and keep this passion in your life in some capacity, it will help with physical health and mental health,” Williams encourages.

Williams has helped build a strong foundation for the dance team to grow in the years to come.