Dana serves as SAM’s Director of Local Affairs. She also oversees SAM’s High Means DUI initiative which seeks to bring light to the stories of victims of marijuana-related car crashes.
She has been a public health and safety advocate most of her adult life! She cut her policy chops serving as a volunteer for the 9th District PTA (San Diego & Imperial Counties) as Vice President of Community Concerns and then Vice President of Public Health. She also served on the state PTA Legislative Committee where she learned to work state legislation.
Volunteer policy work led to professional campaign initiatives, including the Campaign to Stop Gun Violence (including the assault weapons ban, an initiative to eliminate Saturday Night Specials and to prohibit “look-a-like toy guns).
In 1994, Dana ran the San Diego County campaign organization in opposition to big tobacco’s Prop 188 (to roll back California’s progressive tobacco-free workplace laws). In spite of being outspent (20/1) the NO on 188 campaign trounced big tobacco with 74% of the vote.
Her work to reduce binge and underage drinking in Mexico (where the drinking age is 18) was featured on CBS News programs 60Minutes and 48-Hours as well as the Journal of the American Medical Association.