Beyond the work, a few things people who know Dana well would tell you:
She has never had children of her own, but has spent three decades as an honorary aunty and mentor, known to many of them as "Mama D" or "Aunty Dana," to well over 30 children, many of whom she has known since they were toddlers and who are now young adults. They still call her in moments of crisis and moments of joy. Her quiet dream is to one day bring all of them together in one room: kids from the Netherlands, France, Ireland, the US, South Africa, England, and Sweden who have never met but have each grown up knowing her.
She speaks several languages, swims in the ocean whenever she can, makes underwater films, dances, and is a lover of dogs. She volunteers her strategic skills freely to small nonprofits working on food, soil, water and education whenever they need someone to help them think clearly.
When she was diagnosed with cancer, she taped the words POSITIVE VIBRATIONS above her bed: one letter per sheet of paper, and sent digitally to a friend around the world, who decorated it by hand and mailed it back. It hung on her wall through treatment: a physical map of everyone holding her up.
During the deepest pain of her bone marrow transplant, burning tissue, bone-deep aches, nerve pain, mouth sores, she chose not to escalate the medication (each drug requiring another to manage its side effects) and instead transmuted the different sensations into tones: treble, bass the deep bone pain, sharps the nerve pain, a kind of symphony she composed in her mind to move through it. It is, in miniature, the whole philosophy she calls being a Silver Lining Hunter: finding what's redeemable inside the darkest moments.
As a teenager, Dana moved to the US dreaming of becoming a human rights lawyer, wanting to help dismantle apartheid in South Africa. She eventually settled in Washington, D.C. When Nelson Mandela was released and planned his first U.S. visit, she was co-producing his welcome luncheon at the National Press Club and arranged for South African products to be there, so he could have a taste of home. She happened to be standing outside the National Press Club when his car arrived, redirected his security to the correct entrance, and met him briefly. Later that day, before the luncheon, she got to speak with him privately. He told her: you are here to tell the people in the north what you know from the south. Years later, she realised that was her marching orders, she is a bridge between both worlds. She has photographs from that day, and from time spent with Helen Suzman, Walter Sisulu, and Archbishop Tutu, figures who shaped the beginning of her career.
