More about Dena
Growing up in a suburb of Chicago, Dena has been fascinated by genetics since she was six years old when her little sister was diagnosed with a rare chromosome anomaly. She started her career in a laboratory at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she was sequencing human mitochondrial genomes as an undergraduate student. She then moved to San Francisco to work in cancer research at UC San Francisco and obtained a graduate degree in genetic counseling at UC Irvine.
Dena was a cancer genetic counselor at the UCSF Cancer Genetics and Prevention program and then became the Gordon and Betty Moore Endowed Counselor of Hereditary GI Cancer Prevention. Dena conducted research on hereditary cancer syndromes, has been published in several academic journals and has presented her research at national academic conferences.
Dena has been a guest lecturer for graduate programs across the country, has educated medical school students on genetics and genetic counseling, and has consulted for genetic testing laboratories and patient advocacy groups. She has served on and chaired committees for the National Society of Genetic Counselors (NSGC) and the Collaborative Group of the Americas on Inherited Gastrointestinal Cancers (CGA-IGC) and is a member of the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG). She is also a frequent guest speaker for the Chromosome 18 Research and Registry Foundation and Rolf Pancreatic Research Foundation.
Dena has also appeared as a genetics expert on several news reports, podcasts, and was on a team of experts interviewed as part of a CME course through ACOG (The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists) and National Institutes of Health (NIH).
The following are anonymous quotes from patients collected via a Press Ganey Survey about their experience with Dena.
“Dena Goldberg was awesome, very kind and informative, took her time to explain. Seen a lot of doctors past few months and by far the most professional.”
— Former Patient
“Dena is one of the best providers I have ever worked with.”
— Former Patient
“Ms. Goldberg has outstanding bedside manner. She is patient, kind, friendly, and clearly caring.”
— Former Patient
“Dena was very helpful and certainly on top of everything, understood my concerns, and was more informative in ALL ways!!!!”
— Former Patient
Other Work
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Content Creation with Dena DNA
Synthesizing her passion for media and genetics, she founded her personal brand “Dena DNA” (www.denadna.com) with a mission to spread awareness of medical genetics and medical genetics services to the general public through media and marketing techniques not typically used by the medical community. She has created several successful social media campaigns, a web series, designed educational programming and is pursuing her dream of bringing genetic counseling to the mainstream media and becoming the first “TV genetic counselor”.
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Jewish Genetics
With her love of public speaking and her passion for educating about genetics, Dena developed an education program for the Jewish community discussing diseases affecting the Jewish community and carrier screening. She is a digital ambassador for JScreen.org.
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Black Cancer Genes
Dena co-founded Black Cancer Genes with patient advocate, Erika Stallings, to spread awareness of genetic testing and genetic counseling for cancer risk in the Black community. (BlackCancerGenes.com)
