Dana Bartle

Dana Bartle is a unique triple threat when it comes to the world of entertainment. With over fifteen years’ experience in event management, brand partnerships, and hospitality, Bartle has the reigns of The Kagency as President. Bartle’s breadth of expertise is as unique, unorthodox and multi-faceted as the company’s locations and talent.

Bartle began her career in 2002 at New York’s venerable Il Buco restaurant group, starting as a bartender and eventual event manager. Il Buco also put Bartle through sommelier training, and she became the restaurant’s first and still-only female sommelier. Juggling disparate roles – bartender, sommelier, event manager – Bartle came to understand the storytelling elements that bind any great event or undertaking. In her seven years with the restaurant group, she built the company’s events business from the occasional to-do – a wedding here, a chef’s table there – to a formidable enterprise that ran the gamut from wine tastings to buyouts to celebrity and A-list events. During this time, Bartle also received a scholarship to The New School’s Documentary Media Studies program, throwing her into a course of hands-on film study before she’d so much as picked up a camera.

In 2006, Bartle dove into filmmaking while juggling a Friday-to-Monday schedule at the restaurant. She also produced fundraisers for her filmmaker peers, gathering auction items, finding DJs, sourcing vendors and securing the right rooms. Bartle went on to start her own production company, a move that took her everywhere from Detroit, where she worked with the J Dilla Foundation and the formidable Ma Dukes, to multiple locations in Brazil for a band’s six-week tour documentary.

In December of 2010, Bartle made the move to Brooklyn Bowl, and it was her breadth of knowledge – film, wine, music, hospitality and business-building – that made her the right match for the venue. Driven to pair venue’s strengths and uniqueness to the array of potential clients New York has to offer, Bartle increased the venue’s now multi-million-dollar event receipts by over 600%, bringing in dozens corporate and social events. Bartle ran city events for the Bloomberg Foundation, President Obama’s only Brooklyn fundraiser, VH1’s Live Super Bowl broadcast and even built-out of a full-sized boxing ring in the middle of the venue.