Her Story
About Dawn
My career path was shaped entirely by my lived experience. I didn't do well in school growing up because I was more social than focused on academics. I got married young, had children young, and went through a divorce with lived experience of domestic violence. Those experiences became my passion - I found I loved helping people and being that person others felt comfortable talking to, always taking on that big sister, motherly role. When I decided to go back to college, I initially tried criminal justice but realized I didn't want to learn police codes - I wanted to help people going through divorce and family issues. So I became a paralegal and focused on family law, working with family law attorneys during my internship. I also worked at Pregnancy Care, a nonprofit teaching classes and helping people, until their board shut them down. When I saw the position open for peer supporter with lived experience in the juvenile justice system and Children's Services, it was absolutely perfect for me. Our program started in February 2021, and I worked my way up from peer supporter to Case Coordinator. I'm the only one left out of the original crowd, and we've been pretty successful over these 5 years. Starting in October, I'm switching to the Public Defender's Office where I'll do pre- and post-petition cases, helping people who haven't yet had their kids taken - maybe helping them get a job, find a house, or whatever they need to satisfy Children's Services. What I'm really good at is networking and linking people with resources in the community. I've gone to Social Security with people, helped with immigration paperwork for Nepali clients, and I absolutely love helping clients furnish their new apartments through Facebook Marketplace and garage sale donations. My whole lived experience throughout my life kind of led me to where I am.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Dawn
01What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I ever received came from a guest speaker in one of my college classes - a CEO of Goodwill who came in and talked about how she never saw herself doing what she was doing, but life just kind of led her that way. That really stuck in my brain. I'm so grateful to where I am now that my life has just kind of led me this way. I haven't stressed about what career I wanted and what I wanted to do and everything, it's just kind of led me anyway. Another important lesson I learned early in my program is something somebody mentioned: we can't do more than they do in their own lives and their own case. That's been so important to remember, even though it's hard for me sometimes because I just want to take over and tell people what to do.
02What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
One of the biggest challenges I face in social work is learning that you can only do so much. There's a saying we've had since the beginning of my program: we can't do more than they do in their own lives and their own case. That is so hard for me because a lot of times I just want to take over and be like, look, this is what you have to do. It's hard for me sometimes to stand back and go through that process with them when they're just not getting it, to help them think through what they should do and what that would look like, helping walk them through it. It can get frustrating when sometimes people just don't want to do what they need to, and they look for an outlet or somebody else that they can blame. That's even true with my own kids - they do that. My clients can be a lot like my kids, and it feels a lot like my kids.
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