The Kansas Department of Commerce has named a veteran newspaper editor as the head of marketing and communications.
Dena Sattler moves to the Commerce Department after serving as editor and publisher of The Garden City Telegram from 2004 to 2018.
Last year, she was named southwest Kansas group publisher for GateHouse Media, serving as publisher of The Telegram, the Dodge City Daily Globe, The Pratt Tribune, Kiowa County Signal and St. John News.
“Dena brings decades of experience and serious talent to this agency,” Acting Secretary of Commerce David Toland said in a statement.
“She will be instrumental in our push to communicate our mission for Kansas, as well as in exposing the opportunities of the state to potential business partners around the world.”
Sattler started her journalism career at her hometown newspaper in 1985 in Burlington, Iowa. She worked in a variety of reporting and editing roles before moving to Kansas in 1998 for a management training program with Hutchinson-based Harris Enterprises.
Her training included work in various aspects of the newspaper industry at The Telegram, The Hutchinson News and The Ottawa Herald before returning to the Garden City paper as advertising-marketing director.
Sattler is a past president of the Kansas Press Association board of directors. She’s a trustee for the Kansas Newspaper Foundation and the William Allen White Foundation at the University of Kansas.
She is a graduate of the University of Iowa and is s a veteran of the U.S. Army Reserve.
