Today we’d like to introduce you to Danza Huey.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
What a story it is! I am a born and raised guy from the intersection of Cajun and creole cultures in Louisiana – Baton Rouge. I graduated from Baton Rouge Magnet High School with honors and matriculated into Louisiana State University as a first-generation college student. The economy collapsed in 2008 and I walked across the stage in December 2008 with a BA in Communication Studies in hand but nowhere to go. I was referred to a new one-of-a-kind program with the Office of the Mayor NYC and AmeriCorps VISTA called NYC Civic Corps. The NYC Civic Corps program was a brand new, one-of-a-kind program in the newly developed NYC Service office which focused on increasing volunteering and community engagement across New York City. After completing my NYC Civic Corps service year, I jumped into the nonprofit scene as a Program Coordinator at PowerMyLearning and then worked as the Marketing Manager at one of New York City’s first coworking spaces, New Work Cities.
After four years in New York City, I made the move down to Atlanta to begin my MBA journey at The Scheller College of Business at the Georgia Institute of Technology. While at Scheller, I had a chance to work on some amazing projects like trying to discover the bottled water customer perception with Coca-Cola, building a business case to get a new product into Lowe’s and Home Depot, working on a sustainability project with the world’s leading eyewear manufacturer to reach zero waste, and building strategy for a nonprofit hospital in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania with the International Practicum. I enjoyed every second of my MBA experience at Georgia Tech!
After securing my MBA, I made the leap into corporate America as a Product Manager at Mercedes-Benz USA. While at MBUSA, I worked in Commercial Vans and managed the launch of the first-ever mid-sized commercial van in the US, the Metris, and also managed the Sprinter line of vans. After two fun years at MBUSA, I moved over to UPS to work in International Marketing as a Senior Marketing Analyst focusing on US Export. While at UPS, I moved to the Digital Marketing team where I was able to work on enhancing UPS’s digital marketing capabilities and developing and executing customer-facing digital marketing campaigns. Finally at six years post-MBA, I made the move to healthcare and landed an amazing growth role with Anthem Inc. as a Senior Manager – CRM on Anthem’s newly formed Omnichannel Marketing team. At Anthem, I work on Persona and Audience Development and Digital Marketing campaigns.
On the personal business side, I took the leap in 2020 during the thick of the pandemic to launch my first business Rep Your Noun. As a lifetime artist, I have always wanted to have a creative outlet and Rep Your Noun allows me to be constantly creative! Rep Your Noun is a clothing and gifts shop for customers to find and rep the nouns they love via uniquely designed clothing and accessories. Under Rep Your Noun, I created Mash Up – a party card game with a unique spin on the classic game Old Maid “mashed up” with party elements to get all party people in on the fun!
In early 2021, after consulting with friends and referrals for over 10 years, I decided to officially launch my marketing and brand consultancy – Danza Consulting. Danza Consulting’s focus is to elevate small businesses and nonprofits via executable marketing and brand strategies, collateral, and assets.
Life is about enjoying the journey not just the goal and even though I always keep my eyes forward, I often take the time to enjoy the process and look back to see just how far I have come – from humble beginnings in Baton Rouge, Louisiana to now working at a Fortune 30 company in Omnichannel Marketing and owning two businesses. Getting here took some work but I am so proud of where I am today!
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Life has definitely not been a smooth road! As a first-generation college student, I had to financially bootstrap everything on my own. I have been working since I was 16 years old to make sure that I could move forward with my dreams of traveling around the world (I love to travel), moving to New York, moving to Atlanta, paying for my MBA, and standing up my own businesses.
My parents, who passed away in 2019 and 2020, have always supported me with any and all of my endeavors and were my biggest cheerleaders. I also have a great group of really supportive friends and AMAZING loved ones that continue to lift me up and encourage me to continue to accomplish my goals. Not having a safety net to fall back on, I stayed focused on achievement and giving back to create a strong network to smooth out the bumpy roads that life put me on.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
As a lifetime artist and creative, I have worked with some of the world’s leading brands and have led marketing projects for small businesses and nonprofits to elevate their marketing and brand strategies. With my main focus with Danza Consulting, I am constantly looking out for budding SMBs and nonprofits that are looking for a uniquely creative approach for their marketing and branding needs. What sets me apart are my very highlighted and varied experiences with product management, international marketing and digital marketing. I took those experiences and learnings and am able to now help my brand and marketing small business and nonprofit clients launch their new products and enhance their brands in a very effective way.
With Rep Your Noun, I using this business as my creative outlet to push forth my one-of-a-kind and hand-drawn designs as a part of Rep Your Noun’s ever-growing clothing and gifts shop. Please feel free to shop our latest merch and also drop me a note of what nouns you want to see added to the shop! I love to take suggestions and even special requests. Rep Your Noun had it’s first featured pop-up at The Village Retail in Ponce City Market during Village Weekends in November 2021. Only up from here!
After years of thinking about what game I could create as a card game lover, I created Mash Up which is a ‘mash up’ of the classic game Old Maid mixed with party elements to get everyone in on the fun!
So, before we go, how can our readers or others connect or collaborate with you? How can they support you?
For marketing consulting, readers can collaborate with me via danzahuey.com. I love to help and support small businesses and nonprofits with their marketing and brand needs!
Readers can support my new clothing and gifts shop Rep Your Noun by spreading the word to their networks and by shopping at repyournoun.com. We are also on Etsy as well! Feel free to drop me a line for new nouns that you would like to see featured on the site! Also, I am growing my Mash Up party card brand as well so readers can support Mash Up visiting and shopping at mashupcardgame.com.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://linktr.ee/danzahuey
