Brand and creative strategist, actor, and writer.

Dan Linstroth is a brand and creative strategist, actor, and writer based in New York City. Originally from Minnesota, Dan combines Midwestern pragmatism with New York energy in his client work, balancing strategic discipline with a creative edge.

As a freelance Strategy Director, Dan works with agencies and forward-thinking brands, helping shape the identities and campaigns for companies like Apple TV, Major League Soccer, Xbox, Warner Music, Mazda, Sierra Nevada Brewing Company, and others, navigating the intersection of performance and creativity. His approach is rooted in the belief that a brand is not just a message but a worldview and that strategy, done well, clarifies why a company matters to customers and acts as an internal filter through which all decisions should be made.

Dan’s marketing career spans more than a decade and includes work in performance marketing, product innovation, and brand development. He first learned the power of marketing and branding with companies of his own, a tech startup and a coffee brand, and carries with him the hard-won perspective of someone who knows what it means to risk his own capital and reputation on an idea.

Before his business career, Dan lived abroad for four years, teaching English in Spain and Argentina. He also worked as a financial sales manager, a public school substitute teacher, a sandwich delivery rider, a hardware store assistant, and a lifeguard, the best job of them all. These diverse and often unglamorous experiences shape his understanding of work, language, and the quiet dignity of building something real.

As an actor and writer, Dan is drawn to the cracks in the sidewalk, to the subcultures, street corners, and everyday moments that rarely make the headlines. His work explores the gap between how things look and how they really are, the stories people tell, the ones they hide, and the assumptions we make in between.

When Dan is not working, he spends his time in New York City boxing gyms, jazz clubs, theaters, and visiting family and friends in the land of 10,000 lakes.