Dawn is a former youth and young adult Lay Chaplain turned artist, health advocate, and family caregiver for dementia, skin cancer, and end of life.  Her artistic practice includes writing, mixed media collage and fiber arts, and hand raising and releasing butterflies with whimsical names.

Diagnosed with Spondyloarthritis in 2002, Dawn entered health advocacy in 2011 and founded the acclaimed weekly Twitter chat group, Spoonie Chat, in 2013. Spoonie Chat is an inclusive support space for patients and a bridge between the traditional disability movement and folks with less visible disabilities like arthritis, fibromyalgia, chronic pain, and mental illness. 

Throughout its decade-long run, Spoonie Chat has become a community touchstone uniting patients across diagnosis groups, raising awareness, and driving conversations with students, clinicians, researchers, and journalists.

Dawn looks forward to growing patient centered advocacy, engaging the community to tell their stories on their own terms, to participate in narrative medicine, and leveraging cultural transformation to eliminate stigmas around chronic pain and all disabilities.

Dawn is the Secretary of the National Pain Advocacy Center and the Chair of the Community Leadership Council.

She lives in Michigan with her family and a cadre of hand raised butterflies.