Dana Sims is a leading talent agent in the entertainment industry. Over twenty-five years, she has served in prominent positions at the William Morris Agency, International Creative Managment and Creative Artists Agency. In her role, she has guided and shaped the careers of Grammy-winning performers, Oscar and Emmy-winning actors, box office and chart-topping artists. She serves on the Board of the Durban Film Festival and is currently working to open a talent corridor for the African continent to make film and television for a global audience.
Sims started her career as marketing coordinator at Jim Snowden’s Mesa Blue Moon Recordings whose roster included The Original Louie Rankin, Black Uhuru, Kitaro, Le Mystere De Voix Bulgare and Strunz & Farrah. She then was accepted into Columbia and Tristar’s prestigious internship program before working in production at Beachwood Services and Dragon Pictures.
Sims joined the William Morris Agency in 1996 where she worked with famed agent Nicole David who represented such major talent such as Whitney Houston, Patrick Swayze, Melanie Griffith, Elijah Wood and Garth Brooks. Under her tutelage, she packaged material with Ms. Houston and Will Smith and with Garth Brooks and Kenny Babyface Edmonds. Ms. David remains her mentor to this day.
Those sales prompted WMA to promote Sims to agent where she worked with music clients crossing them over into film and TV. Sims developed the careers of Ludacris, Jill Scott, Common, Erykah Badu, Kanye West, 50 Cent, Snoop Dogg and Kirk Franklin.
After 12 years, Sims was wooed to move to ICM where she worked with Drake, Machine Gun Kelly, Jesse Collins, Effie Brown, Cindy Lauper, J. Cole and New Edition. Among many packages, she put Jill Scott in NUMBER ONE LADIES’ DETECTIVE AGENCY and sold both the New Edition and Bobby Brown biopics to BET. During her stint at ICM Sims became heavily inspired by explosive talent emerging on the continent of Africa and sought to concentrate on this area. While at the agency, she signed Pearl Thusi, star of Netflix Africa’s first production QUEEN SONO.
After 11 years, Sims took this new focus to Creative Artist Agency where she worked alongside the agency’s global television group, packaging material with African based creators both in local and international markets.
Dana Sims has been featured in Details Magazine, Ebony, Essence, The Hollywood Reporter and Variety. She is a graduate of the University of Southern California, Annenberg School of Communication.
