About Dana
Does your marketing team
need a wingman?
Here’s how I got started in marketing:
I was a journalist. For 10 years. A pretty good one, racking up almost 2 dozen awards.
But as a mom to young kids, I burned out on the long, crazy hours.
A friend hooked me up with a university looking for an editor for their alumni communications. I knew editing, so I fit right in.
While there, I learned obsessively about marketing and copywriting, eventually becoming assistant marketing director.
From there, I became a director of marketing. A team of one.
It was hard. And I didn’t understand why.
I knew how to do all the things. And I did them all well.
So I didn’t understand why, when my boss asked for results, I couldn’t answer him the way he wanted me to.
I was burning out again, but for a different reason. I was working my ass off without a sense of why or what I was accomplishing.
So I moved to the private sector.
Again, marketing team of one. But this time, I had a boss who trusted me instead of second-guessing me.
That gave me space to breathe and figure out why I hadn’t succeeded before: I didn’t have a clear, goal-oriented marketing strategy scaled to be executed by a team of one.
Once I built that, everything changed.
My activity was targeted. Productive. And effective.
Five years after I left that role (I wasn’t replaced), the company was still ranking for industry search terms—even in AI snippets that hadn’t been invented yet when the pieces were published.
Small marketing teams are under pressure to deliver big results with slim resources.
Most of the time, their leaders are so busy in the trenches, putting out fires and filling in gaps, they don’t have bandwidth to figure out why their plan is falling short.
They don’t need more tools, more templates, or more AI.
That just helps them make the same mistakes faster.
They need an expert, outside perspective to help them assemble their drawer of parts into a high-performance marketing engine.
“Dana is great! She's an incredible communicator, writer, and she's great at synthesizing content from interviews and briefs.
I've worked with dozens of writers and agencies. She stands out head and shoulders above the rest.”
— KELLY ARNDT, ARBOR XR
I give small marketing teams a plan that works.
If you brought in a consultant to fix your marketing plan, they’d give you a shiny playbook and wish you luck.
If you brought in a coach, they’d teach your team to be better marketers.
I do both.
I help your team align on goals and build a sustainable, results-oriented plan.
Then I hold them accountable, rolling up my sleeves to fill gaps where needed.
I teach them to execute that plan, consistently, without burning out.
Until those good habits are hardwired.
“Aside from always meeting deadlines and staying on budget - which she makes look easy - Dana’s creative strategies amaze my team.”
— Brian oster, oc creative
Put your team on a smoother path.
Reach out to schedule a free, zero-pressure consultation. Whether we work together or not, you’ll walk away with a little clarity and at least one action step.
Guest Posts & Podcast Appearances
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Deep Dive into Personal and Business Branding
PODCAST APPEARANCE
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How to Find Topics That Resonate
PODCAST APPEARANCE
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7 Lessons from Horror to Improve your content
GUEST POST
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The Art of Storytelling in B2B Marketing
PODCAST APPEARANCE
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Want to Be a Thought Leader?
GUEST POST
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Content Marketing Simplified
PODCAST APPEARANCE
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Creating a Targeted Content Strategy
PODCAST APPEARANCE
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The Secret Language of Emotional Storytelling
PODCAST APPEARANCE
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Engaging Copy for Boring Industries
PODCAST APPEARANCE
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Differentiating Yourself from the Competition
PODCAST APPEARANCE
10 Random Things About Me
I’m a Leo on the Greek zodiac and born in the year of the sheep on the Chinese zodiac. So I’m both a lion and a lamb.
I live an hour’s drive from one of the biggest metro areas in the US, but I can see a cornfield from my office window.
I’m a boy mom, loud and proud.
I drink black coffee and white wine (not at the same time).
I’m a geek. My favorite fandoms are Doctor Who and Tolkien, but I am a fringe member of the Marvel and DC fandoms as well. And thanks to my geeky family, I can hold up my end of a conversation about Star Trek, Transformers, and a motley assortment of Nintendo properties and animes.
When my high school and college classmates were taking Spanish, I decided to take German. It actually came in handy later in life when I worked in the US office of a German company.
I don’t run. If you see me running, you should run in the same direction, because either something scary is behind me or I heard an ice cream truck.
I’m a dog person.
I love musical theater. In my early teens, I briefly wanted to be a Broadway star.
I’m notoriously clumsy, with a particular gift for falling up stairs and walking into door frames.
