By David Triana
Dani Bowman is one of the most special human beings I have ever heard about or met! As the father of a son with Autism, I first learned about her several years ago from friends within the autism community of Northwest Florida and have followed her career from that point on.
Dani was diagnosed with autism at age 4 and was unable to speak until age 6. As she recounts in her Facebook page, “my family was told I was never going to graduate high school (she graduated with a 4.0 GPA and honors), make friends (she has friends all over the world), or find employment.”
Unfortunately, these are the kinds of dire predictions that most parents with autism hear. But how wrong those predictions were when it comes to Dani Bowman!
Dani’s personal, educational, and professional achievements are impressive and not just because she happens to be in the Autism Spectrum, but because they are the kind of achievements that any person would be most proud of regardless of their condition. She is an example for EVERYONE on what resiliency, hard work, and continuous personal and professional improvement are all about.
DaniMation Entertainment, which she started at age 14, is a cloud-based autism talent development company that produces original and contract animation, illustration, and graphic arts. She has premiered nine animated short films at San Diego Comic-Con International over the past seven years, including a music video that includes the voices of Joe Mantegna, Tom Kenny (Sponge Bob), Debi Derrberry (Jimmy Neutron), among others. Her company has also expanded into the United Kingdom in the last couple of years.
Now age 25, Dani has earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts (Magna Cum Laude) and a Master’s Degree in Business Administration in Global Strategy and Leadership (Summa Cum Laude) from Woodbury University, and is currently working on her PhD!
She is a social entrepreneur who has combined her six passions (Autism Advocacy, Public Speaking, Animation, Illustration, Teaching animation to young adults on the spectrum, and Fine & Visual Arts) in the hopes of inspiring others on the autism spectrum and other related disabilities to follow their dreams!
“I aspire to be the Temple Grandin of my generation”, Dani states in her Facebook page, “working to change the world’s perception of autism and demonstrating all of the special abilities that people with autism have, while striving for acceptance and integration within society.”
Dani’s goal is to reduce the grim autism unemployment numbers (90% are unemployed or under employed per the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics). She does that by empowering youth with animation skills through her classes and jobs. Dani has taught over 2000 youth with autism and other disabilities at Joey Travolta’s Inclusion Films summer boot camps and via her company’s classes. Her work has been featured in the LA Times and other publications in the United States, as well as by the BBC’s Spotlight Evening News in the United Kingdom.
Her list of speaking and special appearance engagements includes being a keynote speaker at conferences in Ohio, Alaska and several other states.
Dani continues to teach at Joey Travolta’s summer camps, but she also conducts her own camps since 2012 including the Arts4All Florida camp in Tampa and the Spectrum Laboratory in Los Angeles.
As with all of us, the pandemic has affected everything that Dani and her company do, but, she did not allow for it to totally stop her and in May 2020, she opened “DaniAcademy” to teach Virtual animation classes!
For her contributions to the Autism community, Dani has been recognized as the First American with Autism honored at the Anna Kennedy “Wear it for Autism” fashion show in London, England, and the Temple Grandin Award from Future Horizons.
Like Temple Grandin and other well-known individuals with autism, Dani is a blessing to our nation at large and to the autism community especially. Like she says “I am more than just my autism diagnosis”, indeed she is, because she not only advocates for persons with autism via her speaking engagements, interviews and other means, but she has a personal mission to LEAD THE WAY via her company’s summer camps and employing individuals with autism.
During this April Autism Awareness Month, Conexion Media Group salutes Dani Bowman for her achievements and her passion to help those affected by Autism. She is indeed the epitome of a caring human being that is making a difference in the lives of thousands….and she is just getting started!
For more information about Dani, go to: DaniBowman.com”, DaniMationEntertainment.com, or her blog, Journeys by Dani Bowman. You may also contact her for speaking engagements via [email protected]
