Dawn's greatest skill is performing the central role that brings together different elements of complex activity or organisation, across diverse relationships; assuring representation and acclimation are the ingredients to success.

Dawn worked for two years with the member agencies of Homeless Link, in the South West and the East of England, including housing associations, service providers, local authorities and numerous groups and forums as a means of igniting change and driving change through the homelessness sector. She has become directly connected to the accommodation/housing sector as a whole and has advised numerous organisations, which gives her a unique network within the industry and access to opportunities for better practice and innovation.

That being said her 20 year career has focused on working in complexity across multiple sectors and industries managing projects, people, strategies and multi layered agendas, often independently and always in a high profile role. Her areas of expertise are primarily management and development, from both people and organisational perspectives.

For example, Dawn built a community economic development project for a housing provider in Canada after the last recession when 1500 households were affected by mass layoffs in car manufacturing, as part of a Social Enterprise she set up called About Time. The project resulted in community cohesion, increased access to employment and particularly retraining opportunities for single homeless. She has worked to promote and encourage Social Enterprise Development as the solution to sustainability in the third sector by shaping secondary business opportunities in conjunction with OSW’s, 3XE network of social enterprise. I’ve engaged in activities like being part of a dragon’s den event for Social Enterprises seeking support for their ventures, working with local farm/drug rehab facility to produce cheese from dairy bi-product to sell to local restaurants as well as helping major London construction company develop an agency for training and employing homeless in Construction industry, among others. Most recently I’ve been asked to mentor a Social Entrepreneur working in the Homelessness sector as he expands his magazine/newspaper distribution business that works directly with homeless people. Equally, she can perform in training, HR and OD as a result of several management roles over the last 20 years as well as setting up and running a multisite, multi-programme management firm that worked in a number of industries including manufacturing and telecommunications.

Of roles Dawn's held outside of the Homelessness sector some have required her to drive significant elements of change as part of its remit. For example, she worked for 3 years with senior leaders in Devon to develop interconnectedness between Private, Public and Third sectors through their personal and professional Leadership Development. She has experience in Programme and Multiple Project Management when she set up and ran a 50 strong consulting organisation in Canada that amongst others held contracts in Worker’s Compensation and Labour Market Research which incidentally, was part of one of the most successful initiatives through the Ontario government resulting in thousands of injured and ill workers to return to employment faster and more cost effectively than in its history. The project was subsequently implemented in 5 other provinces within 2 years of the pilot. She has Change Management capability as demonstrated with the work on the Places of Change project, a multimillion pound central government initiative to change the way services are delivered to homeless and vulnerably housed people. Dawn is highly competent in developing Partnerships and Relationships as seen when she recruited and linked hundreds of Chief Executive and Managing Directors from multiple industries in Public, Private and Third Sectors through a learning programme that would lead to Local, Regional, and National Network Development for Senior Leaders.

Dawn sees herself as commercially focused with an eye on both internal and external business opportunities. This is key to developing an organisations profile, networks and ultimately revenue. She can contribute strategic input to management, fusing organisational needs with fiscal responsibility, principles with brand and earning with accountability. Rapidly analyse complex situations and systems for reporting and forward planning. She is Project Management trained, tried and tested. She understands complex communications, information usability and interaction, branding, marketing and PR. She seeks to diffuse crises by seeing issues as networks and solutions as formulas: quickly determining key points, resource constraints; devising strategies to resolve issues.

Dawn is presently also a trustee for the Open Film Club that seeks to bring the arts through film to homeless rough sleepers, nationally; She is a past Chair of the City of Plymouth Credit Union and an Advisory member of the Pembroke Street Estate Management Board Community Centre Redevelopment.