Danny Kelleher is a writer, content creator and digital strategist. He is energized by the challenge of finding simplicity without oversimplification. In his role as Associate Director, Marketing & Thought Leadership at Gagen MacDonald, he merges a creative foundation with a passion for culture, strategy and research— managing our Thought Leadership initiatives, serving as our primary writer and editor, and owning various marketing campaigns and projects.

Previously, Danny worked at LEAP Innovations, an equity-focused Chicago education nonprofit specialized in education innovation and personalized learning. Danny wrote a wide range of content for LEAP, from speeches and Forbes columns for LEAP’s CEO to website copy, blog posts, social content, newsletters, research reports and an internal style guide for the broader organization. As organizational and team needs changed, he adapted to take on a variety of digital duties, from coding newsletters and webpages to managing paid promotion and the organization website. Many of the concepts Danny first wrote about at LEAP — around leadership, culture, equity, and the intersections of people and technology — continue to inform his thinking and writing for Gagen.

Passionate about education, Danny spent a year after college as a full-time tutor in Southern California, working predominantly with LAUSD middle schoolers through a county scholarship service. Before that, he worked for two years as a tutor in Northwestern University’s official writing center. While at Northwestern, an essay of his was named a Notable Essay in the New York Times’ Modern Love College Essay Contest, and a short story of his co-won the Edwin L. Shuman for Best Honors Thesis in Creative Writing.