Daniela Santana

I've spent fifteen years inside companies growing faster than their systems could hold. Twice that meant stepping in as Acting COO mid-turnaround, rebuilding the org chart while the business kept running. The rest of the time I've been working the other side of it — building talent divisions, running patient acquisition for PE-backed healthcare groups, producing live programming at scale, and taking brands to market across entertainment, healthcare, and media.

Today I work with owner-operators and brands on both halves of the same problem — the systems that keep work moving, and the marketing that keeps it coming in. My specialty is go-to-market expansions and launches — influencer and experiential campaigns, and the operations that run them. That's work usually reserved for larger brands. I now bring it to local service businesses in Houston and Los Angeles too.

Real estate came through my own investing. I needed to market my own property, so I did. Inside of 30 days I had real offers coming in — nine of them, top bid $35,000 over asking — which in this market is not a given. I didn't realize how unusual that was until investors who'd been doing this for decades started asking me how. That's how the real estate practice started.

That pattern repeats. DSMC Partners is now a family of ventures across talent, consulting, tech, commerce, and media, with real estate and dsmc. travel as the newest additions — the latter a corporate and group travel practice I built and handed to a former Chief of Staff to run. I don't operate every one of them day to day. I build the thing, put the right operator in it, and stay accountable for the standard. I also invest in a few I don't run at all.

That's what makes the approach different. I'm a founder and owner-operator, and everything I recommend comes from having lived it. The work doesn't start with the camera. It starts with identifying who the buyer actually is, so the creative reaches people who are in a position to say yes.

I spent ten years in Los Angeles working my way up, and went full time in the agency in 2025. Now I split my time between growing the business and showing other entrepreneurs how to build in a way that leaves their nervous system intact — with God in it, and with the things that bring them joy built into the plan rather than squeezed in when time allows.

I'm the daughter of immigrants and Afro Mexicana, and culture and legacy matter deeply to me. One of my goals is to show my family, and others who started from humble beginnings, what's possible — through how I live and how free it's possible to be. In my spare time I host a weekly Bible study for entrepreneurs, spend time with my dog Coco, travel, ride horses, work out, and give back through One LA, 44 Dreams, Tiny Mighty & Strong, the Fifth Ward Community Redevelopment Corporation, and others.