Dana is an award-winning brand expert, website strategist, and public speaker for creative professionals. She founded Cheers Creative, a brand consultancy that offers branding workshops and courses to help entrepreneurs make bold decisions in their businesses.

A strong advocate for taking risks and pushing boundaries, Dana launched the Cheers Creative Brave Branding Academy™, a comprehensive online training program dedicated to helping business owners achieve powerful branding statements with precision messaging, visuals and websites.

Dana’s work, story, and writings about branding, design, and entrepreneurship are featured in Essence, AfroTech, HubSpot and more.

Dana is an award-winning brand expert, website strategist, and public speaker for creative professionals.

Dana wanted to bring attention to the businesses, artists, and organizations in her community. She founded Cheers Creative, a Memphis-based consultancy that helps budding entrepreneurs develop their brands using her Brave Branding Academy™ online training program. With over 15 years of expertise in graphic and web design, Dana shows business owners how to make a powerful, confident statement with clear messaging, visuals, and websites.

Since opening Cheers, Dana’s work, story, and writings about design and entrepreneurship have been featured and referenced in Essence, Forbes, AfroTech, HubSpot, and more.

In 2020, Dana was named the Grow with Google Digital Coach for Memphis, Tennessee. As one of 20 successful entrepreneurs in the United States serving as a Grow with Google Digital coach, Dana provides free Google tools workshops to help Black and Latinx small business owners in her community reach new customers, thrive online, and grow. In 2022, Dana began to work as the Grow with Google Digital Coach for the entire state of Tennessee.

Dana was recognized as a Memphis Business Journal 2021 40 under 40 honoree for her entrepreneurial creativity and success.

Dana spreads her message at national conferences on how creative professionals can build confidence, push past fears, and lead with bravery to win in business.

Dana James Mwangi is an award-winning brand expert, website consultant, and public speaker with a passion for empowering entrepreneurs to stand out online. With her unique blend of confidence lessons and brand design techniques, Dana has helped countless businesses reach their highest potential.

Growing up in Memphis, Tennessee, Dana was always drawn to the power of art and design. She decided to pursue graphic design at the University of Memphis during her undergraduate years. While attending college, Dana became a freelance print designer for local small businesses.

After graduation, Dana began working in corporate America as a graphic designer while continuing freelance work. She designed marketing materials for SunTrust, Wells Fargo, and home storage items sold in major retail stores like Walmart and Target. These experiences motivated Dana to realize that great design has the potential to safeguard a company and help it grow into a powerful brand.

Dana launched Cheers Creative in 2012 with the goal to help businesses grow through consistent brand and web design. Since then, she’s become a sought-after designer and consultant across many industries including fashion, music, and entertainment. Her expertise has made her clients more visible online while also giving them the confidence needed to reach new heights within their respective fields.

Dana quickly created a name for herself by developing attractive websites for her clients through the use of WordPress, the most popular website builder in the world. In 2015, Dana’s progress was reinforced when she became an official partner of ThemeCo, creators of the popular “X” WordPress theme. Through this collaboration, over 220,000 customers on the ThemeCo platform were able to quickly create attractive websites using templates designed by Dana. Furthermore, she also started creating customized websites for X Theme users all around the world.

In addition to her design work, Dana has become known for her brand strategy intensives and group workshops that emphasize the importance of creating strong visual identities for businesses and organizations.

Dana’s entrepreneurial path, writings, design work, and advice have been highlighted and referred to in over 70 publications including Essence, Forbes, AfroTech, HubSpot, the official U.S. Chamber of Commerce blog, and .Net Magazine (the world’s largest publication for web designers).

In 2020, Dana was named the Grow with Google Digital Coach for Memphis, Tennessee. Her role ultimately extended to include the entire state of Tennessee. As one of 20 successful entrepreneurs in the United States chosen to serve as Grow with Google Digital Coaches, Dana provided free workshops to help Black and Latinx small business owners in her region learn Google tools, reach new customers, thrive online, and grow. As an experienced educator and digital marketing strategist, Dana helped Grow with Google reach over 100,000 business owners and contributed to its recognition in Fast Company’s Innovation by Design Awards.

Throughout Dana’s 15+ year brand design and consulting career, she noticed that her most successful clients at Cheers had simple business models. She wanted to see more business owners succeed with a foundation of simplicity and clarity.

The success of Cheers Creative allowed Dana to expand into training budding entrepreneurs on how to successfully brand a business. This led to the creation of the Brave Branding Academy™, an online education program based on the principles of simplicity and clarity.

The Academy offers guidance on making courageous branding choices, simplifying brand designs, creating effective business processes and systems, and combining them with powerful websites so that entrepreneurs can achieve maximum results in their undertakings.

Brave Branding Academy™ students have established themselves as industry leaders with lucrative clients, five-figure speaking engagements, government and school contracts, and brand partnerships. Academy students have successfully landed featured in places like the New York Times, Essence Magazine, Huffington Post, Fast Company, HGTV, OWN Network, and Good Morning America.

Dana was recognized as a Memphis Business Journal 2021 40 under 40 honoree for her entrepreneurial creativity and success.

In 2022, Dana was chosen as one of three Memphis-based seasoned entrepreneurs with proven success to be an ArtUp Senior Accelerator Fellow. As part of receiving this fellowship, Dana provided business coaching services to African refugees living in Memphis; preparing them for the Cummins CARES Pitch Competition, which awards funds to minority-owned businesses.

Dana is a highly sought-after national speaker on branding, design, and entrepreneurship. She has spoken at events and conferences for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Momference, Women’s Business Center South, Awwwards, and other notable organizations.

A passionate creative professional, Dana has been an instrumental guest lecturer at the University of Memphis for graphic design students. And as a motivational pep-talker for big design teams at organizations like 2U, she has helped many creatives to find their unique confidence to succeed in business.

Aside from her professional life, Dana loves spending time with her husband and children. And when she is not doing that, she has dedicated herself to helping others achieve their full potential by teaching them how to lead with courage and bravery, no matter what challenges may come their way.