Biography
Award-winning executive producer, showrunner, director, and writer Dena Waxman has more than 20 years of experience in the entertainment industry, working across unscripted and scripted content, traditional and digital media, streaming platforms, and film. She has spent over ten years executive producing and showrunning series featuring A-list celebrities, as well as large casts of everyday people. Her experience spans documentaries, docuseries, formatted shows, live shows, performance shows, competition shows, social experiments, and groundbreaking livestreams with interactive components. Regardless of the genre, Dena believes that excellent character-based storytelling-with comedy, heart, and emotion-is the secret to creating exceptional content. She enjoys showcasing the unique perspectives of talent, whether prominent public figures such as athletes, influencers, actors, musicians, experts in their fields, or everyday people. Most recently, Dena won the 2025 City of Angels Film Festival Award for Best TV Pilot Script for Most Hated, a dark comedy pilot currently in development that explores fame, scandal, and the gendered imbalance of public accountability. Dena is a hands-on executive producer. On Thanks A Million, an Imagen Award-winning and Webby-nominated series now streaming on Roku Originals, Dena showran and directed A-list talents such as Jennifer Lopez, Matthew McConaughey, Chris Rock, Aaron Rodgers, Tracy Morgan, Kristen Bell, and more. She was also an executive producer on the groundbreaking Katy Perry 24-hour/4-day live stream Witness World Wide for YouTube, and executive produced and showran the documentary that followed, Katy Perry: Will You Be My Witness?, which currently lives on YouTube Originals. Subsequently, Dena executive produced and spearheaded story and post-production on Oxygen/Peacock’s 911: Crisis Center, winner of CrimeCon’s Clue Award for Outstanding Series, and a Critics' Choice Real TV Award nominee for Best Crime/Justice Show. Experimental, groundbreaking projects and genre shows constructed around compelling characters are Dena’s passion. She has extensive experience bringing a series from casting and preproduction to field and post-production, all the way through to delivery. Dena recruits, manages, and mentors top-notch staff and crews, excelling at constructing systems that work effectively within the habitual constraints of time and budget. She has an exceptional work ethic and thrives under pressure. Dena has also been recruited to develop unscripted series for production companies and networks. A few notable shows include Judge Rose and Dance Moms (Lifetime), Ax Men (History Channel), Big Rich Texas and Big Rich Atlanta (Style Network), and The Commune (NBC). Dena also co-created and sold her pilot H-Town Hustle to VH1. Dena Waxman began her career in comedy writing. She has written for primetime sitcoms and co-wrote the award-winning indie feature film #STUCK, which was released in the U.S. and internationally in 2017 and is now available on iTunes. She has features and TV pilots in various stages of development. Born and bred in Brooklyn, New York, Dena holds a Bachelor of Science in Television, Radio, and Film from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. She is a member of the Writers Guild of America West and the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.
