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Photo by GB Photography and Design
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In less than three years, Danielle O’Malley, 24, rose from intern to director of community outreach at Hudson Valley Hospital Center in Cortlandt Manor—a feat made more impressive when you consider that she did it on the heels of completing her bachelor’s degree in just three years, as well, and getting hired full-time by another hospital before she had even graduated.
Since joining the seven-person marketing team in October 2011, O’Malley has headed a number of advertising and awareness campaigns for new hospital initiatives, with the goal of better connecting the hospital with the community.
Her role is a hybrid of a community organizer and social butterfly, one that cannot be summarized in a single tag line because it changes by the hour and the circumstance. One day she might be coordinating with Kohl’s department store to secure trendy clothes for the models at a maternity fashion show, and the next, creating the graphics for a pamphlet.
“Danielle is a machine!” declares Director of Marketing Victoria Hochman, her boss. “I don’t know how she does it all.”
Before graduating from The College of Saint Rose in Albany with a bachelor’s degree in communications in August 2009, O’Malley was hired full-time by St. Luke’s Cornwall Hospital, where she had interned, to assist the hospital’s foundation in event planning. But her savvy quickly earned her a promotion to the hospital’s marketing department as a marketing and development associate. Late last year, O’Malley was hired away by Hudson Valley Hospital Center.
“Danielle’s poise, creativity, and can-do attitude convinced Hudson Valley Hospital Center to hire her as director of community outreach over many other more mature and experienced candidates,” says Hochman. Initially, “Danielle was hired to plan patient education programming and develop community partnerships, but she quickly expressed an interest in helping with marketing and advertising as well.”
Hochman continues, “Danielle recently convinced Kohl’s department store to help fund the hospital’s new Organic Garden for Healing, after working with them to organize a fashion show for the hospital’s upcoming maternity fair.” And as part of her master’s degree program in public relations at Iona, “Danielle volunteered to take charge of a thirty-five-thousand-dollar campaign for the hospital’s new Institute of Aesthetic and Reconstructive Surgery—an important and very high-profile new service line,” Hochman says. “She worked with our advertising agency and the marketing director to come up with a message, plans for media buys, and events to highlight the new Institute.” Hockman declares: “She’s incredibly poised for her age.”
—MK