Dana L. Schmitt
CEO & President
DLS Solutions, LLC / Schmitt Legal Services, PLLC
Dana L. Schmitt, CEO & President of DLS Solutions, LLC and Schmitt Legal Services, PLLC, is a talented executive, attorney and entrepreneur who launched her own consulting and legal practice businesses in 2009. 
DLS Solutions provides business consulting and strategic planning services, with a focus on entrepreneurism, business start-ups, and women and minority-owned and operated businesses.  Schmitt Legal Services provides legal services to clients that include sports and entertainment firm General Sports and Entertainment, LLC, speakers bureau EQ Speakers, and a variety of women and minority entrepreneurs and their start-up businesses.   
Prior to launching her own businesses in 2009, Dana served as Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel of General Sports and Entertainment, LLC, where she worked for 10 years, beginning in 1999.  In this capacity, Dana worked directly with General Sports founder and entrepreneur Andy Appleby to oversee the development and operation of all General Sports business divisions, subsidiaries and affiliated entities, while handling legal matters for each entity.  The General Sports business divisions included Team Acquisition & Management, Corporate Consulting, Executive Placement, and GSE Meetings & Events, as well as subsidiaries and affiliates that included the Derby County Football Club (Derby, England), the Fort Wayne Wizards minor league baseball team, synthetic turf company General Sports Venue, naming rights and sponsorship sales agency General Sport Alliances, the Sports Executive Leadership Conference, and the General Sports Foundation.  
Dana’s major accomplishments as Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel for General Sports and Entertainment included:
• Serving as lead counsel in the January 2008 acquisition of the Derby County Football Club, an English Premier/Championship League football (soccer) team that was established in 1884 and is one of the most storied football clubs in the world, along with the club’s 33,500-seat Pride Park Stadium and world-class training facilities located in Derby, England.
• Overseeing the management of the Fort Wayne Wizards Minor League Baseball team (Class A Affiliate of the San Diego Padres) from 1999 – 2006, with the club being named “Team of the Year” in 2003 and 2004 in the Midwest League, and serving as counsel for the successful sale of the team in 2006.
• Serving as counsel in the 2003 launch and operation of a national synthetic turf company called General Sports Venue, negotiating the long-term licensing agreement to secure the company’s exclusive rights to all Astroturf® brand products and intellectual property in the United States, overseeing the change in majority ownership of the company in 2006 to minority ownership and securing minority business certification status for the company, and serving as lead counsel in the successful sale of the company in 2009.
• Serving as counsel in the 2006 launch of a naming rights and sponsorship sales agency called General Sports Alliances, and assisting the company in securing key clients, including the Honda / Brawn Racing Formula One team.
• Working with General Sports founder Andy Appleby to create and produce the annual Sports Executive Leadership Conference, the premier, annual leadership and networking event for the most senior executives in the North American sports industry, with keynote speakers that included everyone from Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, to Good to Great Author Jim Collins, to the creators of the ground-breaking Planet Earth global television event.
• Developing and operating GSE Meetings & Events, a business division focused on producing major events, conferences and event marketing programs for corporate and not-for-profit clients, which included Accenture, Amerisure, Avaya, Big Boy Restaurants, Compuware, the inaugural Detroit Football Classic (a Historically Black College and University Football Classic launched in 2003), Flagstar Bank, General Motors, Huntington Bank, LaSalle Bank, the Martin Lindstrom BrandSense Symposiums, the Michigan Cancer Research Foundation, Michigan National Bank, the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame, MSC Software, Pfizer, the Sister to Sister Foundation, Standard Federal Bank, and VIA Rail – Canada.
• Playing an integral role in the establishment of the General Sports Foundation in 2000, for which Dana continues to serve as Secretary and as a member of the Board of Trustees. The General Sports Foundation is a Michigan 501(c)(3) not-for-profit entity with public charity status.  It has raised funds for Special Olympics, ChildHelp USA, and the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and in 2001, the General Sports Foundation launched its banner program called the Suite Dream Project.  The Suite Dreams Project provides healing environments for seriously, chronically ill children through the creation of dream bedrooms, as well as hospital and community spaces that are used by these children.  To date, the Suite Dreams Project has created over 250 healing spaces for ill children in private homes, hospitals and community facilities throughout the State of Michigan.

Prior to joining General Sports, Dana worked for the Chicago law firm of Blatt, Hammesfahr & Eaton, where she represented Lloyd's of London Syndicates, and various insurers and re-insurers in the United States, Canada and Europe.  Dana received her Juris Doctor degree in 1995 from the University of Michigan Law School. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from the University of Michigan in 1992, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, received the William J. Branstrom Freshman Prize for academic excellence, and was recognized at her graduating class Honors Convocation ceremony as the only female to receive all A’s every semester from 1988 – 1992.  She also served in the University of Michigan’s Public Service Intern Program, through which she completed an internship in the Washington D.C. office of United States Senator Carl Levin.
Dana is licensed to practice law in Michigan (active status) and Illinois (retired status).  In 2005, Dana was selected as one of Detroit's "40 Under 40" by Crain's Detroit Business.  In addition to serving on the Board of Trustees of the General Sports Foundation/Suite Dreams Project, Dana also serves on the Advisory Board of the Founders Junior Council of the Detroit Institute of Arts.  She resides in Rochester Hills, Michigan with her husband Todd Szymczak.