Dawn is an Advisor & Principal of the New England Consulting Group, and a key member of our restaurant and association practice teams.
With tremendous intellectual capital and business acumen, Dawn is one of the most respected leaders in the service sector. Dawn’s notable career began at the International Dairy Foods Association where she was Vice President of Marketing and successfully launched the famous “milk mustache” advertising campaign. A leading voice in advocacy, Dawn moved on to become the Vice President of Market Development for the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, a trade association serving America’s consumer-owned electric utilities and providing service to more than 30 million consumers across rural and suburban America.
Subsequently, Dawn became President of AARP Services, the taxable business subsidiary of AARP, where she was responsible for revenue growth and new product development for the 50+ market, serving AARP’s 40 million members. With a proven track record, Dawn was promoted to Group Executive Director of Membership where she focused on growing and diversifying AARP’s membership and brand with greater relevance and resonance. Dawn also launched AARP Financial, an SEC regulated consortium of mutual funds.
Most recently, Dawn was the President and CEO of the National Restaurant Association, the Washington, D.C.-based trade association for the nation’s $863 billion restaurant and foodservice industry. During her tenure, membership increased more than fifty percent and Association revenue doubled for the leading food safety and certification ServSafe program. Dawn also led negotiations with Winsight Media, selling operational ownership of the NRA Show and executing the single largest financial transaction in the Association’s hundred-year history.
Dawn currently serves on the boards of SITE Centers Corp., Save the Children, the Bryce Harlow Foundation, the US Travel Association and was recently named an ASAE Fellow by the American Society of Association Executives, a designation reserved for the top one percent of association leaders in the nation. She has also 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 a member of the Economic Club of Washington, DC., among others.
Dawn earned a Bachelor of Science in Government from Colby College and an MBA in Marketing from George Washington University.
