THE HIRED PENS - Key Persons
Anna left college with a degree in art and no marketable skills. Her career began unceremoniously with a humiliating stint working a frialator at Seattle SuperSonics basketball games.
She soon returned east to a slightly less humiliating job as the towel girl at a swanky health club. Seeing some promise - or just seeing the opportunity to take advantage of a disillusioned 23-year-old - a member hired her away to write telemarketing scripts for Brain Gum. (As in "chew more, study less," IQ-enhancing bubble gum.) While the experience caused her to wrestle with her moral compass, she had never had so much fun.
With The Hired Pens, Anna has won numerous awards for her work and built a roster of clients she truly believes in. She still occasionally wonders if she should be doing something more important with her life, though that's only when she's with her friend who's an ER nurse.
Anna holds an M.A. in non-fiction writing from the University of New Hampshire and a B.A. from Colby College. She lives in Portsmouth, N.H., with her husband and two sons.
Anna Goldsmith labored at her laptop, sipping her double half-caf with a twist and struggling mightily over an arcane grammatical rule. Dan O'Sullivan silently approached. Leaning in over her left shoulder, he whispered, "A semi-colon might do the trick." Anna blushed. She knew right away that this man would one day be her business partner.
And so it came to be. Anna and Dan made their professional union official in June 2001, christening their venture The Hired Pens. The world of professional business writing would never be the same.
As a little boy, Dan aspired to write about sports for a living. He realized his dream in the late '90s, crisscrossing the country covering professional and college football for ABCSPORTS.com and ESPN.com.
After a few years, though, Dan tired of interviewing sweaty, naked men twice his size. So he sold out to join an Internet business consultancy riding high during the dot-com boom. Alas, his plan to strike it rich on skyrocketing stock options fell apart when he was laid off nine months later.
From the ashes of unemployment, Dan rose, phoenix-like, to co-found The Hired Pens. He's since had the opportunity to work with everyone from entrepreneurs getting businesses off the ground to marketing professionals at corporations, universities and healthcare systems. And he's come to love being his own boss, particularly the part about wearing shorts to work all summer.
Dan earned an M.A. in mass communication from Boston University and a B.A. in political science from the College of the Holy Cross. He and his wife live in Somerville, Mass., along with their three occasionally adorable children.