When I began sharing with family and friends the desire to ensure that my son and daughter would be able to grow up and experience personal and professional success of their own choosing by teaching them lessons from the myriad of successful organizational leaders and innovative entrepreneurs that I had been lucky enough to have learned from throughout my career…well, the thought of, “If I had a nickel for every parent who said, ‘While you’re at it, could you teach my kid, too?’” kept occurring more and more…and thus, Chief Parenting and the Junior Chiefs youth success coaching program was born.
Dan Dement
Founder, Chief Parenting
Principal, Junior Chiefs
The Catalyst
Dan Dement’s concern over how his own two children would be able to achieve sustainable success and happiness amidst an ever-challenging and highly-competitive 21st
century global economy was the catalyst
for Chief Parenting.
For the first 20 years of his career, Dan built a distinguishable reputation as an award-winning brand marketing and communications consultant who helped businesses and their leadership establish themselves as being “The Best” in highly competitive domestic and international marketplaces. Likewise, he was intent that his own children grow up to be “The Best” whatever it was that they would eventually wish to become.
Building upon the enrichment education system that he began developing for his own kids, Dan is now assisting parents around the world empower their children to achieve sustainable success and happiness – of their own choosing! He is joined by a team of equally-concerned and talented coaches who, through Chief Parenting’s strengths-based, career-oriented Junior Chiefs youth success coaching program, are helping parents achieve maximum return on strategic investments in the future of our children.
The Evolution of Chief Parenting
Dan has been fortunate enough to have represented or worked directly for legendary business leaders and game-changing entrepreneurs across diverse industries including: Higher education, publishing, personal finance, public relations and Information Technology. Along the way, he developed brand marketing and communications programs for:
- One of the world’s largest educational publishers
- Two of the leading international private-sector higher education organizations
- One of the earliest online personal finance communities
- The largest telecommunications network in the United States
- The world’s most powerful electron microscope (nanotech at the subatomic level)
- And many others!
What he observed at both the business and personal leadership levels of these organizations was that common among those achieving success isthe presence of an established set of values, fully focused toward providing quality goods and services to specific groups of people – regardless of the industry. Furthermore, it was the relentless pursuit of such values that resulted in sustainable levels of success for these organizations and their leaders. Serendipitously, many of Dan’s career mentors were parents themselves, who, unknowingly, were shaping the evolution of what would become Chief Parenting.
Following the birth of his two children, it became Dan’s intent to introduce them at the earliest age possible to the invaluable knowledge and guidance he had gleaned from successful leaders of the organizations he had worked with over the past decades. Additionally, he was determined to teach them best-practices and lessons-learned from his own career achievements.
A Quest for Personal and Professional Success
Dan’s first internship during his senior year in high school at a Top-40 radio station led to his being named one of the youngest music directors in the nation by age 19. During his undergraduate studies, he was the editor of a collegiate newspaper and member of the first place-winning senior advertising competition team. Two more internships in college (for General Motors and a local advertising firm) positioned Dan for a great career launch after earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism with an emphasis in advertising. By 22, he was well-prepared for a run at the world of brand marketing and media communications.
From his first post-college freelance gigs to capitalizing on career-advancing opportunities during the “Internet Boom” to working his way up to consulting vice president for one of the first online reservations technology companies before he turned 30, Dan was learning from some of the brightest and most innovative minds of the latter 20th century. However, a combination of the pending “dot-com bust” and the near loss of a close family member presented Dan with some critical revelations about both career and life in general. He decided to take a personal sabbatical, traveling across Asia, Europe and Latin America over a period of almost a year-and-a-half in order to provide more of a worldly context for making these critical life decisions.
Upon returning from his sabbatical, Dan’s newly gained perspective on a rapidly expanding 21st century global economy shifted his interest towards higher education; specifically, career-oriented education in fields that educators classify as “passion careers.”
Having followed his own passions toward a successful career in a world where marketing and media were being revolutionized by the power of the Internet (he was the kid more interested in the Super Bowl advertisements than the game itself), Dan was someone who truly understood the goals and aspirations of passion career students. His role in driving brand reputation programs for two of the largest private-sector providers of higher education in North America provided him with opportunities to mentor students on personal branding, networking and self-marketing techniques upon graduation. Having earned an MBA with a concentration in Marketing, Dan is frequently tapped as a guest lecturer on various marketing and branding topics at the undergraduate and graduate levels.
Dan is proud to have spent the past decade assisting students toward dream careers spanning fields such as advertising arts, animation, business, culinary arts, engineering technology, fashion design, graphic design, healthcare technology, Information Technology, marketing communications and Web & video game design. He is enthusiastic about his new personal mission is to establish Chief Parenting as the enrichment education partner parents trust to maximize return on investment in their own children’s success and happiness.
Dan lives in Northern California with his wife and two kids. With an understanding of the benefits afforded by a rooted knowledge and respect for Chinese culture in our world’s evolving global economy, his entire family studies Choy Li Fut Kung Fu and Yang Style Tai Chi Chuan. He is an avid outdoorsman, enjoying boating, camping, fishing, golfing, hiking, hunting, scuba diving, skiing (on water both liquid and frozen), surfing and travelling to remote corners of the world as much as possible. So, ya, he is a huge fan of clean air, clean water and clean environments.
Dan invites you to check out the Junior Chiefs youth success coaching programs that he and other like-minded parents have developed to help your child achieve sustainable success and happiness.
Or see what he and other Junior Chiefs coaches are up to on the Chief Parenting Blog.
