About Dayna | Publishing Strategist, Educator & Digital Communicator

Publishing Beyond the Book

Long before publishing systems, higher education, and digital communication became part of my professional vocabulary, I was already making things.

Creativity and curiosity showed up in handmade cards, calendars, notebooks, journals, sewing projects, classroom assignments, learning to cook from a childhood cookbook, experimenting with design, and saying yes to a surprisingly wide range of interests.

One semester, that meant taking industrial arts in seventh grade, building a wooden racecar, and racing it down the school hallway. My car finished somewhere close to last, which says less about my enthusiasm for making things than my early engineering skills.

I was making notebooks, journals, and handmade books long before I understood publishing as a profession or realized there was language for the things I enjoyed creating. Looking back, many of those experiences quietly foreshadowed the work I do today.

As an Indiana State University and IU Indianapolis alum, my background bridges informatics, visual communication, publishing, education, and digital communication. My academic path through Graphic Arts Management and Informatics continues to influence how I approach communication, learning, systems thinking, technology, and the organization of knowledge.

Over time, my work evolved across corporate, educational, entrepreneurial, nonprofit, and mission-driven environments where communication, learning, creativity, and organized knowledge mattered.

Along the way, one question kept returning:

How do you organize what you know into something clear, useful, teachable, and designed to last?

That question sits at the center of my work.

Today, I help experts, educators, entrepreneurs, authors, organizations, and knowledge-driven projects transform material into meaningful books, courses, workshops, frameworks, educational resources, publishing systems, and long-term intellectual property.

Sometimes the work begins with a manuscript. Other times it begins with years of expertise living across presentations, workshops, notes, Google Docs, archives, conversations, or ideas people know are valuable but have not fully shaped yet. Both are familiar territory.

My work is grounded in a belief that publishing can be bigger than the book.

Knowledge has the potential to become something people learn from, apply, revisit, share, teach, preserve, and carry forward.

Sometimes that looks like authority, visibility, and educational growth.

Other times, it looks like preserving lived experience, institutional knowledge, family history, professional insight, meaningful work, or ideas people do not want lost to time.

My approach combines publishing strategy, educational structure, visual communication, and systems thinking to help shape knowledge into professional books, learning experiences, digital resources, and connected publishing ecosystems designed for learning, mission, visibility, preservation, and long-term value.

In addition to my publishing and strategy work, I teach in higher education, facilitate workshops, mentor entrepreneurs, and speak on topics related to publishing, digital communication, educational development, AI, and knowledge organization.

Because meaningful work deserves more than living in scattered folders, forgotten workshops, crowded notebooks, disconnected files, or “we should really do something with this someday” conversations.