For nearly 30 years, Dawn has been involved in bringing “the new” to healthcare. A serial entrepreneur and proven executive, she’s spent her career working with stakeholders on the leading edge of healthcare.
As co-founder of MACH, Dawn is bringing important healthcare education to a broad population. She believes that digital health initiatives can help stimulate meaningful behavior change that can improve the lives of patients on a large scale. The company’s smoking cessation app, MO, helps people quit tobacco and maintain their quit for life.
MO is based on a successful in-person group smoking cessation program, augmented with social support. Dawn led the team that adapted this program for use as an mobile application. She also led the content development effort. MO provides original and curated content designed to inform and support behavior change.
Prior to her work with MACH, Dawn founded Aegis Creative Communications. This medical communications agency worked with leading biopharma companies to bring life-changing therapeutics to patients with rare and previously-untreated diseases. As CEO and President of Aegis, Dawn’s teams designed and implemented commercialization strategies for more than 30 product launches and line extensions in the fields of oncology, hematology, neurology, and immunology.
When she founded Aegis, biotech companies were facing challenges in educating healthcare providers on new therapies with novel mechanisms of action. Traditional ad agencies did not provide medical writers who could translate complex science in a way that healthcare providers could understand why and how new treatments would work for their patients, which caused the breakdown. To solve the problem, Dawn identified individuals with advanced scientific degrees and a passion for clear communications and taught them to write. These medical writers, combined with talented artists and designers, produced disease and treatment education for providers and patients. Aegis-produced educational materials have been used worldwide to help providers, patients, payers, and regulators in understanding complex diseases and treatments.
From the beginning of her career, Dawn worked beside state and local public health leaders on important public health initiatives in cancer screening and prevention, seat belt use, smoking cessation, and public awareness in the early days of the AIDS/HIV epidemic. She had an active role in bringing health education and information to the public through the use of mass media and group education.
Following several successful public health education campaigns, she was tapped to help launch the nation’s first community wellness program in the parks and recreation setting for Foothills Park and Recreation District. Dawn led marketing and community outreach efforts for the program and its fundraising arm, The Foothills Foundation, for five years. The bold vision of the wellness program was to Classes and events offered through this program brought wellness initiatives into the community setting, enabling broad access. Foothills received the Gold Medal in 1991 in large part to the success of this initiative.
After leaving the public sector to launch her first business, Dawn consulted with health insurers bidding on the new TRICARE program. Four of the five projects she worked on resulted in multi-billion dollar wins for her clients.
She holds a BA in Biology from Sterling College, and completed the certificate program in Public Health Sciences at the Colorado School of Public Health in 2016. She was a business education workshop leader for 9 years at the Aji Network, teaching business practices that accelerate growth.