About Dawn
Dawn started her career as a licensed practical nurse at Community Memorial Hospital in Syracuse, Nebraska, in 1994. She continued her education and earned her RN the following year, her bachelor’s in 1998, and her doctorate in 2018. Twenty-four years to climb every rung of the nursing ladder.
The work in between was not gentle. Two years of ICU and CCU at Bryan Memorial in Lincoln. Eleven years at St. Elizabeth — six in intensive care, five in pediatrics — with school nursing in Elmwood alongside it. Then pediatric nursing at Porter Hospital in Valparaiso, Indiana, and substitute school nursing across two Indiana districts.
She came back to Nebraska in 2014, took a bedside job on the inpatient unit at Boys Town National Research Hospital, and finished her doctorate while working there.
Two roles shaped how she practices now.
The first was four years of pediatric phone triage at Boys Town. Assessing a child she couldn’t see, from a parent’s voice, with no chart and no exam. It teaches you to ask the right question early, and to take a worried voice seriously.
The second was Community Alliance’s Crossroads Clinic, caring for adults with severe and persistent mental illness — conditions that aren’t meant to be resolved, just steadied, one adjustment at a time. That work rewards patience over urgency.
She opened A Balanced Mind in December 2020 and brought all of this with her.
- Credentials
- DNP, APRN
- Education
- Doctor of Nursing Practice (Family), Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, IN — 2018
- Bachelor of Science in Nursing, Nebraska Wesleyan University, Lincoln, NE — 1998
- Registered Nursing Diploma, Bryan Memorial School of Nursing, Lincoln, NE — 1995
- Practical Nursing Diploma, Southeast Community College, Lincoln, NE — 1994
- License
- Nebraska license 112706
- Practicing since
- Nurse practitioner since May 2019 · Registered nurse since 1995