DOT works with some of the nation’s most iconic institutions and brands because they know our team executes and delivers a seamless product. Our team of award-winning professionals demonstrates a passion for all aspects of public relations from media relations, events management, content creation, and social media strategy.
A product of Muhammad Ali’s Louisville, Kentucky, Dedra Owens is president and founder of DOT Communications. Her reputation for producing attention-getting campaigns within African American and urban markets has made her a sought-after advisor for international campaigns. As a public relations professional with 30 years in the ever-changing field of communications, she and the DOT Communications team know the ropes, having developed a deep bench of media contacts, creating out-of-the-box media strategies for Fortune 500 corporations, government agencies, private foundations, and some of the largest and most historic African American-owned businesses and organizations in the United States including the United Negro College Fund, National Museum for African American History and Culture Smithsonian, United Bank of Switzerland, and Amazon.
DOT Communications has created successful media campaigns wooing the likes of producers and editors from The Washington Post, CNN, NBC Blk, Joe Madison Show, The Root, Crisis Magazine, Sirius/XM Radio, The New York Times, Radio One, and NNPA. Before founding DOT Communications, Dedra began her public relations career with Golin/Harris Communications, one of the nation’s leading public relations firms before joining UniWorld Group, Inc., the nation’s longest-standing full-service multicultural agency. Dedra is a graduate of Howard University, and a resident of Washington, DC. She previously served as president of the Washington, DC Chapter of the Black Public Relations Society.
Robert Pierre is an author, prize-winning journalist, educator, and entrepreneur, who has provided media solutions to clients including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, NationalUrban League, T-Mobile, Amazon, Smithsonian’s National Museum for African-American History and Culture, and UNCF. He is adept at messaging, community outreach, media training, and content development.
Robert led the messaging for the National Coalition for 100 Black Women-Delaware Chapter to reach black women and their families with culturally relevant messaging using a combination of earned media, out-of-home (billboards), social media posts, and advertising. He was a counselor on a national, bipartisan campaign that involved qualitative and quantitative research about the most effective ways to reverse these polarizing and entrenched anti-Muslim biases.
As a 20-year reporter and editor at the Washington Post, Robert was the initial impetus behind the 2006 groundbreaking series and later book, BeingA Black Man: At the Corner of Progress and Peril, a series of 15 original articles, video documentaries, many online discussion areas, and narrated photo galleries.
He was on the team of Metro reporters who won the Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Virginia Tech shooting massacre in 2007. He contributed a chapter to the academic text, The Trump Presidency, Journalism and Democracy (2018), and co-authored A Day Late and A Dollar Short: High Hopes and Deferred Dreams in Obama’s ‘PostRacial” America (2010). He has taught journalism at Dillard University in New Orleans Howard University and Georgetown University in Washington D.C. Robert graduated from Louisiana State University with a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism in December 1990.
