About Diane

Diane Shader Smith has had a vibrant career as a writer, speaker, publicist, and fundraiser with an extensive roster of clients during her multi-decade career. When Diane’s daughter Mallory died at the age of 25, she brought Mallory’s memoir to publication as Salt in My Soul (Random House 2019), which led to the documentary of the same name (3Arts Entertainment). Using Mallory’s words, Diane has given 250+ talks worldwide about patient insights, the global health crisis called AMR, and phage therapy – everything Mallory wrote about and stood for. In May of 2024, Random House published an adaptation of Mallory’s first memoir under the title, Diary of a Dying Girl, that shifts the lens towards the emotional hurdles and mental health challenges Mallory faced and wrote about. Diane, a recent graduate of the Narrative Medicine CPA Program at Columbia University, will continue to speak for Mallory using her expertise to bridge the gap between medical professionals and the personal stories of those they serve, ensuring that Mallory’s profound insights are widely shared.