A reflective piece on self-worth and valuation, exploring how unexpected lessons from mentors and role models help us recognize our true value and stop discounting ourselves.
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About Dana
She is an accomplished finance and accounting executive with over a decade of experience driving financial integrity, operational efficiency, and strategic growth across architecture, real estate, mortgage lending, and consulting. Currently serving as President of DKH Consulting, she partners with business owners and leadership teams to bring structure, clarity, and execution to complex financial environments. Prior to this role, she served as Controller at Lawrence Group, a national architecture and design firm, where she led all finance and accounting operations, co-led an ERP conversion to Deltek Vantagepoint, developed executive reporting packages, and oversaw multi-state compliance. Her career also includes a transformative role as Assistant Controller for a rapidly growing private equity real estate investment firm, where she managed growth from four funds and seven properties to twenty-two funds and over twenty-three properties while building and leading a small accounting team. She also served as Corporate Controller at USA Mortgage and as Senior Financial Consultant at Robert Half. She is recognized as a strategic, hands-on leader who combines deep technical expertise with strong team development skills to deliver clarity, accountability, and lasting value in every organization she serves.
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Ten minutes with Dana
01What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
If you don't know what your core values are, your personal core values, get right with them. That is your compass. My core values are kindness, trust, integrity. Protect your peace and energy.
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Articles by Dana
Take Yourself Off Clearance
How a Simple Message About Confidence Taught Me That My Worth Isn't for Sale
An Unexpected Lesson
One of the things I love most about learning is that the biggest lessons rarely arrive where you expect them.
They've come from conversations, life experiences, coaches… and, most recently, from a woman best known for helping other women feel beautiful.
While reading my morning devotional, I came across a passage from Kim Gravel's Collecting Confidence that stopped me in my tracks.
"Don't put yourself on sale because you are trying to fit in. Take yourself off clearance, baby."
I read it twice.
Not because it was about clothes. Because it wasn't.
As I sat there, I realized Kim wasn't talking about clothing. She was talking about valuation.
That single word immediately resonated with me because, as a CFO, I spend my career thinking about value. Not just what something costs, but what it's truly worth. The more I reflected on her words, the more I realized this wasn't just a message about confidence. It was about something so many of us, especially women in business, have done at one time or another.
We've put ourselves on clearance. Not because someone else told us to. Because somewhere along the way, we started negotiating against ourselves before anyone else had the chance.
I've been there.
For years, I measured my worth through other people's opinions, titles, opportunities, and recognition. If someone didn't see my value, I found myself questioning whether I had assessed it correctly.
Recalibrating My Own Valuation
Then I met a coach named Loribeth.
One of the greatest gifts she gave me wasn't a better salary negotiation or career advice. She helped me recalibrate my own internal valuation.
She challenged me to stop letting other people determine my market value.
At the time, I thought we were talking about compensation.
We weren't. We were talking about self-worth.
That lesson has stayed with me through career transitions, difficult conversations, moments of uncertainty, and opportunities that required me to hold my ground instead of shrinking to make someone else more comfortable.
It has also shown up in unexpected places.
After losing more than 100 pounds, I realized I wasn't buying clothes simply because they fit anymore. For the first time in a long time, I was choosing clothes because they brought me joy.
And that's when it hit me. This wasn't really about the clothing. It was about finally giving myself permission to choose what reflected how I felt about myself, instead of settling for what felt available.
It was another reminder that I had stopped making decisions from a place of limitation and started making them from a place of value.
The truth is, our worth isn't determined by whether everyone else recognizes it.
Recognition and worth are not the same thing. Sometimes recognition comes quickly. Sometimes it takes years.
But if we discount ourselves before anyone else has even had the opportunity to see what we bring to the table, we've already accepted less than we're worth.
Recognizing What Was Already There
Kim Gravel's words reminded me of something I hope I never forget.
Take yourself off clearance.
Not because you're trying to convince the world you're valuable.
But because deep down, you already know you are.
Long before I read those words in my devotional, Kim had quietly planted another message in my life.
"Believe in your own beauty." It was printed into the back of one of the very first pieces of her clothing I ever owned. Her flagship Flexibelle pants.
At the time, I thought it was simply a thoughtful tagline. Looking back, I realize it was much more than that.
Those words reflected something back to me, like a mirror.
They challenged me to believe something about myself that I wasn't yet fully living.
That simple phrase helped ignite a journey that ultimately led to losing more than 100 pounds.
Today, I realize Kim's messages have never really been about clothing.
They've been about helping women recognize the worth that was already there.
Maybe that's what the best teachers do. They don't give us something we don't already have. They simply help us recognize what was there all along.
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