Danielle Whaley came to Villanova in November 2021 and earned a promotion to her current role of Director of Media Relations in early 2023. She previously served as the Athletic Communications & Digital Media Coordinator.
The Sevierville, Tenn. native is the primary contact for women's soccer, rowing and UNITAS and is the secondary contact for the men’s and women's basketball programs. In her first year and a half on the Main Line, she served as the primary contact for swimming and diving, rowing, water polo and baseball. In that early span, she drove the complete overhaul and redesign efforts of the UNITAS portion of the Villanova website and created a campaign page to highlight the career accomplishments of women’s basketball star forward Maddy Siegrist. She also earned Designer of the Year recognition at the University level from the College Sports Communicators (formerly known as CoSIDA) in June 2023, her 15th Creative and Digital Design award since 2018.
Whaley joined Villanova with a bevy of award-winning content creation and athletic communications experience after serving as the Associate Director of Athletic Communications at Carson-Newman University in Jefferson City, Tenn. from August 2017 to October 2021. She became a 14-time CoSIDA Publications and Digital Design honoree there, earning first-place laurels for her video feature work, men’s soccer media guide and cover designs, and men’s soccer game note while also receiving plaudits for motion graphics/GIFs, infographics, posters and video recaps. Whaley was the primary contact for the men’s soccer and men’s and women’s golf programs, leading all graphic design and video production efforts for those teams’ social media accounts. She was also the secondary contact for baseball and men’s and women’s basketball. With the Eagles, she elevated C-N Athletics social media presence through the production of GIFs, digital stickers, AR filters, wallpapers, and various pieces of creative video content including the weekly Mossy Creek Minute show that she designed, wrote, filmed, hosted, and produced each week for their Twitter and Instagram accounts.
A 2017 graduate of the University of Tennessee with a Bachelor of Science in Communications, she served as a student intern for the athletic department's media relations staff in her final semester. She also contributed to the Tennessee Journalist, the digital news site for UT's School of Journalism and Electronic Media, for just under four years as a sports correspondent and host of the Triple Play Podcast.
During her college career, she started her professional experience by spending three summers with the Tennessee Smokies, the Double-A affiliate of the Chicago Cubs, as a promotions assistant and on-field host. She produced graphics and videos for in-game use on the videoboard, hosted both the live and pre-recorded Game Day Show for select games, contributed to Bear Trax, the weekly television show, through interviews and standups, and managed the Rally Crew.
