Dawn Mendelsohn

National Training Associate

Dawn Mendelsohn had worked to develop, fund, and sustain out-of-school-time programs for over 20 years. She came to this work through an unusual path. Her first career, as a civil engineer, included field inspections of industrial sites. She then moved into the classroom doing program development and lesson plan design for group and individual technical trainings, organizational behavior, and consulting workshops for an international engineering firm.

She “retired” from engineering to be a full time mom for nearly 10 years where she became a passionate supporter of public education through the development of volunteer networks, out-reach and support of underrepresented populations, capacity development and grant writing for her local public school system. Since 1995, Dawn has dedicated her time to the development of afterschool and out-of-school-time programs that connect students to their broader community. She, along with a handful of communities, worked with NIOST to develop and field test the system known today as APAS.

After retiring from the public schools in 2013, Dawn has been a trainer and independent consultant with the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, Lemelson at MIT, and Wellesley College (through NIOST), where she continued her work as an organizational development, capacity building, and program improvement specialist, focusing on out-of-school time programs. Dawn holds a Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering.