About

The Longer Version

I spent years leading campaigns at Y&R for brands like Hot Wheels, UNO, Matchbox, and Disney. Flying coast to coast, producing 60+ commercials a year, building teams, winning pitches. It was the dream.

Until it wasn't.

With young kids at home and a suitcase constantly packed for New York, I made the hardest decision of my life: I walked away from the career I'd built.

Then came the spiral. A divorce that made the local newspaper (not in a good way). Financial chaos. Years out of the workforce. A complete loss of identity. A second marriage that was harder than the first. A husband who got fired. Four boys — two mine, two his — figuring out how to become brothers.

We bootstrapped. During COVID, we launched three e-commerce businesses from our kitchen table. I discovered AI and became obsessed. I got certified. I started helping other entrepreneurs build freedom-first businesses.

But underneath all of it — the pivots, the reinventions, the controlled chaos — there was always this thing I wanted to do.

Write.

Not copy. Not content. Not marketing emails.

Stories.

The kind that sit in your chest for decades. The kind you inherit from the women who came before you. The kind that feel too big to tell until suddenly you're 50 and your youngest just left for college and you realize: it's now or never.

So here I am. Girl gone writing.

I'm working on a novel about my grandmother — a 13-year-old POW who played basketball to survive a Japanese prison camp. I'm writing essays about the mess of motherhood, marriage, and midlife. I'm finally putting words to the stories I've carried my whole life.

Some of it is heavy. Some of it is funny. Most of it is both.

Thanks for being here.

— Dione

P.S. I still help entrepreneurs leverage AI on the side. Old habits die hard. If that's your thing, find me at [link to other business].