Deanna Zandt // dz

@deanna.bsky.social

7406 Followers 229 Following

Generally entertaining human.

The old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters. Antonio Gramsci
✨✨ Happy September!! TL;DR> Hire me! ✨✨ -- As I wrap up a set of projects, I once again have availability for new clients. "What will she do for money?" I hear you ask. Well, I won't do *that* (yet), but here's what I *will* do: * Design and build small Wordpress based websites, either as a one-time deal with handoff, or with an ongoing support contract * Support establishing or growing a Substack newsletter, for fun and for profit * Create text- and image-based social media posts that align with and help realize an organization's strategic goals * Advise on what those goals should be, if needed * Work with your organization to perform a digital audit, and/or vet digital-services vendors for you (creating RFPs, reviewing proposals, interviewing candidates) My topic specialities include media, advocacy, nonprofits, mental health/emotional wellness, early childhood policy/advocacy, gender-affirming work, rural issues and more. Examples of my work are available on request, and check out some new recommendations in my LinkedIn profile (linkinbio ofc) from folks I've worked with recently. I'm also open to hearing about things I don't have listed here, but that you might think of me for!
Deanna’s picks: Down the Woody Guthrie rabbit hole again I was out a dive bar in my neighborhood singing karaoke last weekend, and I was wearing my “This Machine Kills Fascists” T-shirt from The Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa. A guy came over to me, pointed to my shirt, and yelled, “Woody Guthrie is AWESOME.” This is not something one expects to have yelled at them in an old-school, working-class Brooklyn neighborhood dive bar! We got to talking, and he told me about two episodes of a podcast called “Behind the Bastards.” Now, normally the show covers, shall we say, challenging people as their focus, but for their holiday episode, they choose a really great human and cover lesser-known aspects of their life. This past year, they chose Woody Guthrie! (One of the hosts is from Oklahoma, and the podcast overall have a pretty strong left-leaning lens.) I listened to both, and absolutely loved diving in. There’s something to learning about all of the complicated parts of our heroes—it makes them more human, more accessible, more worthy (in my opinion) of our love. Here are the episodes on YouTube; you can also find them wherever you get your podcasts.
The second memory comes from running into her at a restaurant in Austin in 2018, with a whole bunch of other people. We were standing off to one side of the group, when she touched my elbow gently and said, "So, I listen to podcasts when I run, annnnnnd..." I started laughing and I knew what was coming next. I had been part of an incredibly powerful #MeToo episode of This American Life, and the aftermath had been wild. I feared deeply that people I knew in professional contexts would drop me like a hot potato, dismiss me, think less of me for what I had
A black and white photo of a tired man pulling his face down with his hands