Founder & CEO, Vision Board Media
Donna Serdula
Personal Branding Strategist • Author • Speaker • Consultant
Donna Serdula's Story
A Pioneer in LinkedIn and Personal Branding
Donna Serdula is a personal branding strategist, author, speaker, and founder of Vision Board Media and LinkedIn-Makeover.com. Since 2009, she has helped thousands of executives, entrepreneurs, professionals, and organizations clarify how they want to be known and translate that clarity into stronger LinkedIn profiles, executive resumes, professional bios, thought leadership, visibility strategies, and career brands.
She is the author of LinkedIn Profile Optimization For Dummies and has spent more than 15 years studying the intersection of identity, reputation, visibility, career growth, and professional opportunity.
Today, Donna’s work focuses on a question that has become increasingly important:
When credentials, information, and even content can be replicated almost instantly, what makes a person unmistakably themselves?
That is where personal brand begins.
Donna Serdula
Quality, Service, Empowerment: Transforming Brands, Changing Lives
Donna began writing LinkedIn profiles professionally in 2009, when LinkedIn was still primarily viewed as an online résumé.
She saw something different.
LinkedIn wasn’t simply a place to document where someone had been. It could help a person communicate where they were going, what they stood for, what made them valuable, and why someone should want to know them.
That insight led Donna to launch LinkedIn-Makeover.com and develop a different approach to profile writing: one centered on strategy, storytelling, positioning, and the person behind the résumé.
What began with LinkedIn grew into something much larger.
As clients advanced into leadership, entrepreneurship, consulting, board work, and new stages of their careers, Donna saw that a strong LinkedIn profile was only one part of the equation.
People needed clarity first.
They needed to understand the thread connecting their experience, strengths, values, perspective, reputation, and ambitions.
That work ultimately became Vision Board Media.
Founder of Vision Board Media
Vision Board Media is an executive and career branding agency helping accomplished professionals clarify their value, strengthen their positioning, and build the visibility and career assets to move toward what’s next.
Donna and her team work with directors, VPs, C-suite executives, board candidates, senior individual contributors, founders, entrepreneurs, consultants, advisors, and organizations.
The work may result in a LinkedIn profile, executive résumé, board résumé, professional bio, personal website, speaking platform, or thought-leadership strategy.
But the work does not begin with the document.
It begins with the person.
Who are you now?
What do you want to be known for?
What value do you consistently create?
Where are you going next?
The answers shape everything that follows.
AUTHOR
Author of LinkedIn Profile Optimization For Dummies
Donna is the author of LinkedIn Profile Optimization For Dummies, published by Wiley.
The book grew from Donna’s work helping professionals move beyond simply filling in LinkedIn fields and instead use the platform to communicate a compelling professional story.
Now in its second edition, the book explores LinkedIn profile strategy, personal branding, professional visibility, networking, and the role LinkedIn plays in building opportunity.
For Donna, LinkedIn has never been about keywords alone.
It’s about helping the right people understand who you are.
Personal Branding for Senior Leaders
As professionals become more senior, branding becomes more nuanced.
At the director, VP, C-suite, and board level, a career story can no longer be a chronological list of responsibilities and accomplishments.
It has to communicate leadership.
Perspective. Judgment. Influence. Business impact. Reputation.
And increasingly, it needs to answer a larger question:
What do you bring that another equally qualified person does not?
Donna’s executive-branding work helps senior leaders identify that distinction and express it consistently across their professional presence.
That can include:
- Personal and executive brand strategy
- LinkedIn profile positioning
- Executive and board resumes
- Professional and leadership bios
- Personal executive websites
- Thought leadership and visibility strategy
- Career positioning and reinvention
- Speaking and expert positioning
Original Frameworks & Intellectual Property
Over years of working with professionals at different stages of their careers, Donna has developed frameworks to help people understand and communicate who they are more clearly.
The Personal Brand Figure
The Personal Brand Figure provides a visual way to examine the elements that shape how someone is known — moving beyond job title or functional expertise to uncover the fuller professional identity.
Career Brand Archetypes
Donna’s Career Brand Archetypes identify recurring patterns in how people naturally create value, influence others, solve problems, build relationships, and move work forward.
R.I.S.E.
Donna’s RISE framework explores personal branding as an ongoing process: Revelation. Identity. Shine. Evolution.
It reflects Donna’s belief that a personal brand isn’t invented. It is uncovered, understood, expressed, and continually refined as a person grows.
Speaker & Facilitator
Donna speaks to companies, leadership teams, associations, professional groups, and conferences about personal branding, LinkedIn, career visibility, identity, and the human qualities that become more important as artificial intelligence changes the way we work.
Her presentations combine practical strategy with a deeper exploration of how people see themselves and how they want to be experienced by others.
Topics include:
- Executive and personal branding
- Building visibility without becoming an influencer
- LinkedIn and professional positioning
- Career Brand Archetypes
- Personal branding in the age of AI
- Career growth and reinvention
- Helping employees build brands that strengthen the organization
Donna also facilitates interactive workshops and leadership experiences designed to move beyond inspiration and into application.
PODCAST HOST & GUEST
Dream Big with Big Dreamers
Donna is the host of Dream Big with Big Dreamers, a podcast exploring the people behind meaningful careers, ambitious ideas, reinvention, leadership, entrepreneurship, and growth.
The conversations reflect a theme that runs throughout Donna’s work:
Careers rarely move in straight lines.
The people who create meaningful work are often the ones willing to see themselves differently before the rest of the world catches up.
Donna’s Philosophy
Donna believes personal branding should never be about manufacturing an image.
It is about becoming more conscious of what is already there.
- Your experiences.
- Your strengths.
- Your point of view.
- The way you lead.
- The way you solve problems.
- The things people consistently trust you to do.
- And the future you are trying to create.
When those pieces become clear, a résumé becomes easier to write. A LinkedIn profile sounds more like you. A bio stops reading like everyone else’s. Thought leadership becomes more natural.
And opportunities begin to make more sense.
Because people can finally see the value that was there all along.
Work With Donna
Donna works with executives, senior professionals, founders, entrepreneurs, consultants, advisors, leadership teams, and organizations navigating growth, transition, increased visibility, or the question of what comes next.
Explore:
Executive Branding
For senior leaders ready to clarify their positioning and elevate how they are known.
Career Branding
For professionals who need a cohesive LinkedIn profile, résumé, bio, and career story.
Speaking & Experiences
For organizations, leadership teams, conferences, and professional communities.
Corporate Services
For companies investing in executive visibility, employee branding, thought leadership, and leadership development.
Insights
Explore Donna’s perspectives on personal branding, executive branding, LinkedIn, careers, visibility, and professional identity.