Dana is an award-winning brand expert, website consultant, and public speaker who blends confidence lessons with branding and design techniques to make sure business owners succeed.
After studying graphic design during her undergraduate years at the University of Memphis, Dana created marketing material 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. Cheers has amassed an international client roster including fashion, music, and entertainment industry movers and shakers.
In 2015, Dana was an official partner of ThemeCo, creators of the “X” WordPress theme. The “X” Theme was one of the most popular and best-selling WordPress Themes in 2015. Through this collaboration, Dana has worked on sites for X Theme users all around the world. She also created website templates that are included as part of the X theme, making it possible for over 220,000 customers using the ThemeCo platform to construct attractive websites quickly.
As Cheers Creative grew, Dana became a highly sought-after WordPress designer and website consultant. Her entrepreneurial path, writings, design work, and advice have been highlighted and referred to in over 60 publications including Essence, Forbes, AfroTech.com, HubSpot, and .Net Magazine (the world’s largest publication for web designers).
Through her work at Cheers Creative and her 15+ year brand and web design career, Dana noticed that her most successful brand and web design clients had simple business models. She wanted to see more business owners succeed with a foundation of simplicity and clarity.
Dana has launched the Cheers Creative Brave Branding Academyâ„¢, an online education program for budding entrepreneurs. The program guides business owners to make courageous branding choices, embrace clarity in their messaging, simplify their brand design, create business processes and systems, and combine those systems with their websites to stand out and become industry leaders. Students at the Brave Branding Academyâ„¢ have established themselves as just that, with lucrative clients, five-figure speaking engagements, government and school contracts, and brand partnerships. Students have also been published in the New York Times, NPR, HGTV, Discovery+, and other media outlets.
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. She also highlights Tennessee-based entrepreneurs of color as guest speakers during her workshops.
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. While working in this capacity, Dana advised Binghampton-area residents on how to compete in a business pitch competition sponsored by Cummins CARES (Cummins Advocates for Racial Equity).
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. She has been an instructional guest lecturer at the University of Memphis for graphic design students. For organizations such as 2U, she has given motivational pep talks to big graphic design teams and creative departments.
When she’s not spending time with her husband and children, Dana loves to spread her message on how creative professionals can build confidence, push past fears, and lead with bravery to win in business.