Ken Sloan

Ken Sloan stands among the elite American Standard ballroom dancers of the 1970s, winning the United States National Professional Ballroom championship with his partner Sheila Webber-Sire in 1974 and retaining the title in 1975. The pair, competing in International-style Standard, established themselves as California's preeminent ballroom professionals at the height of their competitive career.

In 1974, the same year they claimed their first national title, Sloan and Webber-Sire founded Sloan & Sloan, their ballroom school, embedding their championship expertise directly into teaching and training. The school became one of California's enduring ballroom institutions, allowing Sloan to extend his influence beyond competition into the fabric of West Coast dance education.

Beyond the studio, Sloan shaped the regional competition landscape. He and Webber-Sire were early organizers of the Emerald Ball, one of the West Coast's significant ballroom competitions. In 1989, Wayne and Donna Eng purchased the event from the Sloans, a transition that marked both the continuation of their legacy and the growing institutional weight of the competition they had built.

Later in his career, Sloan moved into adjudication and professional standards-setting within the American International Dance Association, based in Glendale, California. In 2013, he received a lifetime-achievement award from DBDC, a recognition of his decades of service to ballroom dance. He remained connected to the Emerald Ball in 2019, returning as an original organizer and elder figure in the community he had helped establish.