Dawn was born and grew up in Colorado, south of Denver, in a rural community. She received her BA degree in Sociology and Human Services from Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado and her M.A. in sociology from Humboldt State University. After graduate school she worked for four years as a senior research analyst for the Center for Applied Sociological Analysis & Education (CASAE), a research and evaluation institute at Humboldt State University. She worked on evaluation and research for the Humboldt County Probation Department and several of the local AmeriCorps programs. In 2006 she joined the Public Health Branch for the Humboldt County Department of Health & Human Services, where she worked for the next seven years. She worked on multiple grants and projects, including youth traffic safety, injury prevention, and alcohol and other drug prevention. She then joined CCRP in 2014 as the Director of Health Research. At CCRP, she has worked on multiple research and evaluation projects that focus on the health and well-being of rural populations. She is the evaluator for multiple community-based and university-based projects. She is focused on topic areas such as children’s oral health, tobacco and other drug prevention, suicide prevention, building healthy communities, access to healthy food and physical activity, preventing adverse childhood experiences, promoting resilience, and improving service delivery to vulnerable populations.