Dana W White

Dana W. White was born in Charlottesville, Virginia. Her parents met and married at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Her paternal grandfather served in World War I and became the first black man in her hometown to lead a department at the University of Virginia Hospital. He would go on to be the owner and publisher of Charlottesville's only black newspaper. Her paternal grandmother was the first black registered nurse hired at UVA Hospital. Her maternal grandmother was one of the first blacks to earn a civil servant position in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The legacy of the slave, Dana's great grandmother was a sharecropper from Sylvester, Georgia, raised on the same land her grandparents had been slaves.

Named by her two older brothers, Dana was the first black student to graduate with a degree in Chinese history from the University of Chicago. She also studied at the Capital University for Foreign Studies in Beijing, China and earned a scholarship to study at Hankuk University for Foreign Studies in Seoul, South Korea. She served as a press secretary for House Republican Conference Chairman, Rep. J.C. Watts, the only black Republican serving in the Congress at the time. She was a publicist for the Fox News Channel during the controversial Florida Recount of 2000 and the Director of the Washington Roundtable of Asian Pacific Press for The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C. with more than 400 journalists from across Asia. She was the Taiwan Country Director at the U.S. Department of Defense and an editorial writer for The Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong.

In 2007, she became a foreign policy adviser to Sen. John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign and worked for Vice Presidential candidate, Gov. Sarah Palin. Later, she served on the Senate Armed Services Committee responsible for foreign policy and the emerging threats subcommittee. She's worked for Gen. Stanley McChrystal (USA) and Gen. John Allen, (USMC), four-star generals who both served as Commander of International Security Assistance Forces in Afghanistan.

In 2012, Carlos Ghosn, CEO of the Renault-Nissan Alliance based in Paris, France, selected her to be the Director of Speechwriting and Strategic Communications, and serve as his primary English-language speechwriter. After three years in Paris, Dana left the Alliance and started 1055 Grady, a leadership and strategic communications firm, named after her paternal grandfather's address in her native Charlottesville. She specializes in advising C-Suite executives on demonstrating their unique leadership character and creating a credible narrative for internal and external audiences. She is based in Washington, D.C. and Paris, France.

She is a regular panelist on PBS's To the Contrary with Bonnie Erbe. Her writings have appeared on Gannett, Knight-Ridder, BET News, the Fox News Channel, and the Washington Post. She is Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Seminar XXI National Security Fellow and received the Office of the Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Public Service. Leader Designed: Become the Leader You Were Made to Be is Dana's first book.