Starting at a Black Newspaper, Dana White Is the First Black Woman to Run Comms at a Major Automaker

By Troy Schulz via https://chicagocrusader.com/

Zenger News

As Hyundai North America’s first Black chief communications officer, Dana W. White knows what it is like to have two feet in two worlds.

“Growing up I always knew about the power of communication, the power of words,” she said, talking about her childhood in Charlottesville, Virginia. “My grandfather, who was born in 1896, founded the oldest Black newspaper in the state. I used to cut ad sheets every month and write copy and process black-and-white photos [at the paper]. The entrepreneurial spirit runs deep in me and my family.”

While the weekly Black newspaper, the Charlottesville-Albemarle Tribune, is gone, the family’s entrepreneurial spirit lives on. “The environment I grew up in, my family, was that there was never just a pot of gold waiting for me at the end of the tunnel,” she said. “It’s in my DNA – to make it happen for yourself.”

“The National Newspaper Publishers Association salutes Hyundai for its decision to elevate an African-American woman leader to the position of Chief Communications Officer. In this year where the focus is on the empowerment of all women, Dana White represents and embodies the best of Black America,” a spokesman told Zenger News of White.

She studied hard in college, taking the toughest courses on purpose even if they were scheduled early in the morning and required long walks across Chicago wind-chilled campus. Those courses included learning to read, write and speak Mandarin, the mostly widely used of the Chinese-language dialects. She majored in Chinese history at the University of Chicago.

After college, she moved to Washington, DC without a job and work- ed as an intern and a…

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