PEOPLE PROFILE

JUST KEEP LEARNING

With a love for storytelling and hospitality, Dana Bartle has taken the industry by storm. BY KASSIDY TARALA

If there’s one thing Dana Bartle will never stop doing, it’s learning. Having earned a degree in history and attended both film and sommelier school, Bartle has done it all. She’s been a bartender, a film producer, a sommelier and—for the past nine years—the vice president of sales and events at Brooklyn Bowl.

When Bartle first joined Brooklyn Bowl, she was a one-woman show. Now, she relies on her team of all women to push the envelope with bigger and better events than ever before.

“I have an all-female team, and I want to make sure I am always uplifting them and encouraging them to keep learning, too,” Bartle says. “Before I was doing everything on my own and was relying only on myself. I didn’t have a team yet, so I had to learn how to rely on others.”

Now, Bartle says she has a great team which she can bounce ideas off and share some of the workload with. “I used to do everything myself, so sometimes I forget I can have someone else take on tasks. They’re a great asset, and it truly makes me realize how much more we can get done when we work as a team,” she adds.

From bartending to sommelier school to film production, Bartle says the two constant loves in her career have been storytelling and hospitality, themes she has carried over to every job.

“I’ve been really lucky with how all of my experiences have come together. A big part of making documentaries is storytelling, and hospitality is just taking care of people,” Bartle says. “Bartending is a lot of chatting with people and making sure everyone is happy and taken care of. I realized that all I was doing in these jobs was storytelling and hospitality.”

Though Bartle has been met with a lot of, “You work at a bowling alley? Why?”, she has quickly proven that Brooklyn Bowl is much more than that. From galas and presidential events to concerts and high-end events, Brooklyn Bowl has become a popular venue for all sorts of meetings and events.

“It’s all about the vibe and creating a safe space for people to come and make memories that will mean something for the rest of their lives,” Bartle says. “I wanted to help [Brooklyn Bowl] craft something that would be their events department. I want to tell their story. This is exactly where I want to be.”