Lindsey Massimiani Pepe, ’07, Danielle Hamra Hooker, ’07, and Dennis Brown, ’96, all graduated from La Salle University. Now the three Explorers are at the helm of S29 Consulting, a growth marketing agency.    

Prior to running their growth marketing agency, Lindsey Massimiani Pepe, ’07, Danielle Hamra Hooker, ’07, and Dennis Brown, ’96, all found their start at La Salle University.  Today, as the founder, co-founder, and partner of S29 Consulting, all three credit the lessons learned in the Communication Program, the relationships they cultivated, and their first professional experiences as student workers at La Salle University with being the start of a successful journey.  

For Pepe, La Salle was “a family affair.” When she applied, her mom worked in admissions and her older brother was already an Explorer.    

Although she considered going to a larger college or further from home, she chose to enroll at La Salle.    

“Ultimately, the decision made a lot of sense,” she said. “And it already felt like home before I went.”   

Like Pepe, Hooker also knew current students when she was looking for colleges. Originally from North Jersey, spending a weekend with an Explorer friend on campus helped her make a decision.    

“I just had the whole La Salle experience,” she said. “It felt like the right fit. I’m very intuition focused, and that’s why I decided to come.”    

It was through those campus connections that the two first met. Hooker’s friend and Pepe’s brother were in the same fraternity.    

“She was one of the first people I met the weekend before school started, because we both knew older students,” Hooker said. “We met then and have been friends ever since.”    

Both women settled into Explorer life quickly.   

“I met my lifelong friends here, I fell in love with Philly, I had a great experience,” Hooker said. “I feel like I was really ingrained with the school and I loved it.”    

Pepe, whose family home was less than 30 minutes from campus, echoed the sentiment.    

“I loved my life at La Salle and the whole college experience so much that it became my home,” she said.         

Both graduated from the Communication Program, and credit the education they received with preparing them for their future careers. Their professors’ real-world experiences and the rigorous coursework stood out for both of them as valuable assets to the program.    

Hooker, who double majored in digital arts, discovered her first professional role in La Salle’s Alumni Relations Office, a job that gave her more than just tuition assistance but also an introduction to project management, mentorship, and professionalism.  

After finishing their time at La Salle, Pepe and Hooker both went on to have successful careers.    

Hooker worked in events at Drexel University, before relocating to California where she first got a job at the University of Southern California working in the School of Engineering’s research institute. After three years, Hooker took some time off to travel, before moving to San Diego and starting a marketing role with an IT service provider.    

Pepe stayed in Philadelphia, first working in marketing for a nonprofit, before moving to Temple University, where she stayed for eight years, broken up only by another stint at a nonprofit. After Temple, Pepe spent some time in the marketing division of a global food and hospitality company.    

In the midst of their careers, the Covid-19 pandemic hit. Pepe was laid off from her job. Instead of looking for a new one, she decided to become an entrepreneur and start a jewelry company called Studio Twenty Nine, which she owned and operated for five years. Her company even featured a necklace called the Explorer. When restrictions lifted, she worked with an agency for about a year, but realized she was missing the independence and ownership that came with being her own boss.   

“I had already run my own business once,” she said. “I knew I could do it again. But this time blending everything I’d built a career on with the kind of intentional life I actually wanted, on my own terms.     So, I left there, started S29 Consulting, and the agency I formerly worked for became client number one.”  

Her jewelry company acted as inspiration for her next venture when Studio Twenty Nine transformed into S29.   

At the same time, Hooker, who took some time off during the pandemic to have her second child and be with her family, had also gotten into consulting. The two women reconnected, and after talking about Pepe’s vision decided to work on it together.    

“Things were so easy and fell into place as a working relationship, so here we are, two and a half years later,” Hooker said.    

As Pepe and Hooker got to work establishing S29, which was founded around the idea of engaging with impactful clients they were passionate about, their focus was on company growth.    

At this time, S29 took on a client that was an agency and the employer of Brown, also an Explorer alumnus. Pepe was brought in to help with a particular project, and she and Brown, although being strangers at the time, worked well together. When Brown left that agency, he reached out to Pepe and soon became the third member of the S29 team.    

“For me, this was the right opportunity at the right time,” Brown said. “I think the strength of it is, we all bring something different to the table which helps diversify how we can help our clients.”    

At S29, Pepe is responsible for strategic planning, organizational transformation, and fractional executive leadership as well as agency operations. Hooker leads sales enablement, revenue operations, partnerships, and the firm’s HubSpot practice, and Brown heads up branding, marketing strategy, and media.  

Although their careers had been different, Brown had a similar experience to Pepe and Hooker as an Explorer at 20^th and Olney.    

“I basically grew up on the campus,” Brown said, adding that his mother worked at the University, running the former computer lab in Wister Hall from 1985 to 2010. “Instinctively, it felt like the right fit for me, just because it was so familiar.”    

As a commuter student, his experience was slightly different, he said, but he was easily able to make the most of everything the University had to offer.    

Brown started his time as an Explorer as a communication major with a broadcast concentration, before realizing it wasn’t the right fit for him. After taking some time off to reevaluate, he considered becoming a nursing major but eventually decided on returning to the communication department, this time in the public relations track, valuing the wide array of future careers it opened up.    

“There’s a dexterity to how you can apply it,” Brown said. “You learn skills, you learn traits, and then you figure out what direction you want to apply them.”    

Brown took what he learned at La Salle and developed them into a marketing and branding career that spanned a variety of industries, with a particularly long stint in sports. He worked for the Atlantic 10 Athletics Conference, was a part of the Philadelphia Phillies organization when they won the 2008 World Series, and helped launch the Philadelphia Union soccer team.           

It was with the Phillies, where Brown was part of the team responsible for opening the team’s new home stadium, Citizens Bank Park, that he had one of the standout moments of his career.    

“I got to watch multiple generations of fans walk into that ballpark arm in arm and see their team on a grass field for the first time,” Brown said. “I was at that ballpark constantly, but it netted out in this validating yet amazing, goose-bump experience.”    

Although they all got to S29 in different ways, Pepe, Hooker, and Brown have all seen their Lasallian education, and the things they learned as Explorers, stay with them throughout that journey, whether on a personal or professional level.    

For Hooker, it’s the connections that have stayed with her, which her role in S29 is a perfect example of.    

“The relationships and foundational experiences I had at La Salle set the tone for my whole career. Now at S29, it’s incredibly fulfilling to bring that knowledge full circle, especially when helping our higher education clients build the infrastructure they need to grow and connect with their communities,” she said.    

Pepe learned that flexibility, not the plan itself, is usually what gets you where you’re going.         

“Things are not always going to work out the way that you think they are, and that’s not the end of the world,” she said. “That’s usually where the opportunity is. My whole career has been one pivot after another. I’ve gotten pretty good at finding the upside when the ground shifts.”   

And Brown often goes back to the skills he learned in a public speaking class, not thinking when he was in the classroom that he would still be using them this many years later.    

“Learning that skill at that time, I didn’t realize what the benefits were other than it was getting me through the class,” he said. “Not knowing that it was going to carry with me for a long time, I think it’s something pretty valuable.”    

Although all three have thought back to their days at La Salle throughout their adult lives and careers, a trip back to campus reignited their inner Explorer.    

Seeing all the developments and changes on campus is a sign of the positive progress La Salle is currently making, Brown said, while Hooker expressed her desire to bring her West Coast born and raised children to Philadelphia to see the campus at during Homecoming Weekend.    

Pepe is ready to follow her mother’s example.    

“For so many years, my mom was still working here and kept me in the loop on everything happening at the university, so I always felt connected in a way,” she said. “Since she retired, I’ve lost that thread and I don’t really know what’s happening here anymore. Being back on campus makes me realize I want to pick up the torch myself now.”  

-Naomi Thomas