A transformational business leader with decades of P&L experience building top-line revenues, reporting to and serving in leadership roles on boards, and leading legislative and regulatory advocacy for one of the nation’s largest business associations, Dawn has built a reputation for operational excellence and innovative strategic thinking, demonstrating integrity and a deep and passionate commitment to all she undertakes.
The longest-serving and first woman President and CEO of the National Restaurant Association, she was responsible for advancing and protecting the nation’s one million restaurants and its 15 million employees, overseeing a historic shift in the organization’s governance and business model, while more than doubling membership, employee engagement and revenues. Experienced in M&A, Dawn also led the negotiations for an equity partnership with a leading media company, selling operational ownership of the National Restaurant Association’s Show (the largest foodservice and hospitality trade show in the Western Hemisphere) in 2018 and executing the single largest financial transaction in the Association’s hundred-year history.
She is credited with ensuring the National Restaurant Association maintained technological and analytic leadership during a period of intense disruption to provide the nearly $1 Trillion foodservice industry with the data and resources they needed to continue to thrive. She retired after twelve years of service in December 2019.
Prior to assuming this role in October of 2007, Dawn was President of AARP Services, the taxable business subsidiary of AARP, where she was responsible for revenue growth ($185M to $790M) and new product development for the 50+ market (2002-2007), serving AARP’s 40 million members. While there, she launched AARP Financial, an SEC-regulated consortium of mutual funds.
From 1999-2002, Dawn was Group Executive for Membership for AARP, focused on growing and diversifying AARP’s membership, relaunching AARP’s brand for greater relevance and resonance, and building the organization’s first knowledge management capability.
She served as Vice President of Market Development for the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (1993-1999), a trade association serving America’s consumer-owned electric utilities and providing service to more than 30 million consumers across rural and suburban America. Prior to that, Dawn was Vice President of Marketing at the International Dairy Foods Association (1990-1993), where she launched the iconic “milk mustache” advertising campaign.
Currently serving as an Executive-In-Residence at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, her work is focused on identifying and architecting industry-driven solutions to challenging public health and social problems, including obesity, food waste and food insecurity, in partnerships with corporations, nonprofits and government. She also serves as Principal for the New England Consulting Group, a management and strategy consulting firm serving iconic CPG brands across the globe and in an advisory capacity as Executive Managing Director of a division of the global commercial real estate firm JLL.
Dawn is the Chair of the Board and an independent board member of SITE Centers Corp. (NYSE: SITC), where she serves as a qualified financial expert on the Audit Committee and also serves as chair of the board’s Compensation Committee. She also serves on the board of FLUENT (CNTMF), a multi-state vertically integrated cannabis company currently operating in Florida, New York, Pennsylvania and Texas, where she chairs the Governance and Compensation Committee. She is currently Chair of the Board of MedStar’s National Rehabilitation Hospital, in Washington, DC. She previously served on the Board of Save the Children US for nearly fifteen years, serving as Interim Board Co-Chair and Chair of the Nominations and Governance Committee. In this role, she led a highly lauded blue-ribbon Board Governance Review Committee. She is an active member of The Economic Club of Washington, DC, the International Women’s Forum, and the National Association of Corporate Directors.
Sought out for her intellectual capital, business skills and track record of success, Dawn has been twice named “Trade Association CEO of the Year” by two different national organizations (2017 and 2019) and recognized by Washingtonian Magazine as one of the “most powerful women in Washington” for five consecutive years. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Government from Colby College and an MBA in Marketing with honors from The George Washington University. A member of the inaugural class of the Harvard Business School’s “Women on Boards: Succeeding as a Corporate Director” program in 2016, she has lectured at the Harvard Business School, Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, and Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law, and is currently an NACD (National Association of Corporate Directors) Certified Director (2021).
