She began her career in the cable television industry, holding marketing positions with local cable operators and two national networks: HBO and Bravo. Most of her career was spent in New York City with positions in sponsorship marketing for PBS, advertising account management for two Broadway shows, licensing negotiations for Sesame Workshop’s entertainment properties, and eventually serving as Vice President of Marketing and Communications for Harlem’s famed Apollo Theater.
Dawn returned to her native Philadelphia in 2008 to assume the Executive Director position at the local Grammy chapter, and then went on to lead all marketing efforts for the Kimmel Center’s inaugural Philadelphia Festival of the Arts (PIFA) in 2011. She has lent her expertise as a business development consultant to the Mural Arts Program, and recently served as the Director of Marketing and Communications for the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania.
In 2017 Dawn was selected by Americans For The Arts to develop the curriculum for their pilot program: Arts Marketing and Audience Engagement in the 21 st Century, funded by the PA Council of the Arts. In this role, she led a series of training seminars for a small arts organizations to create effective marketing strategies. She shared her expertise as the lead presenter during a workshop on Building and Sustaining Diverse Audiences at the 2018 National Arts Marketing Conference in Seattle and at multiple arts-related conferences throughout the country.
Dawn holds dual degrees in Public Policy and Drama from Duke University and completed graduate work in Arts Administration at Drexel University. She serves on the board of the Philadelphia Cultural Fund.
