Dena has served on the OBUUC finance committee for the last five years and on the Stewardship Committee this past year. She is a former Dean and Professor of Business at Alverno College where she served for twenty-eight years. Prior work includes commercial lending and marketing at First Wisconsin Bank (now US Bank) and assistant professor of linguistics anthropology at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Dena is a graduate of Syracuse University (BA anthropology), MBA (Marquette University) and PhD (UW-Madison).

Dena has lived in Racine since 1978. During that time, she also managed low-income housing projects in Racine. Dena and her husband John Stutt raised their two adult children, Tim and Margaret, in Racine. They have two grandsons-both named Ollie!