Dawn Bradshaw

About Dawn

A seasoned, results-focused senior-level marketing leader, Dawn develops successful go-to-market strategies, demands best-in-class creative, and builds integrated campaigns that deliver results for clients. An award-winning change agent, she leads businesses though digital transformation, post M&A integration, and building marketing strategies, disciplines, and teams from the ground up. With deep full-spectrum marketing experience, Dawn cultivates customer and market insights, develops successful marketing strategies to position products and solutions, and builds powerful brand stories and customer experiences that deliver. With 30 years corporate and agency experience, she excels in transforming marketing operations to drive cost-savings and omni-channel optimization to drive ROI. An entrepreneurial spirit, Dawn has a passion for growing businesses with limited resources, translating business goals into marketing strategies, and building and scaling high-performing teams and initiatives to turn around businesses and drive growth.

How Dawn has Helped Businesses Grow

• Reduced marketing spend $3 million by bringing together multiple siloed marketing groups, restructuring as shared services cross-functional team at First American Title.
• Drove 10% growth over prior year relaunching brand and leading turnaround for declining brand in shrinking market at Adtalem Global Education.
• Slashed marketing spend by $1.1 million in first fiscal year by building a robust internal creative agency from the ground up, including talent and infrastructure to execute at speed and scale.
• Offset $3.3 million in costs by implementing marketing operations solution to support needs of 95 national campuses.
• Drove volume increase of $2.2 billion for digital mortgage lender, Wintrust Financial, by transforming marketing strategies and team to support business goals and growth.
• Increased prequalified volume opportunity for Consumer Direct team by $530 million in first six months, by implementing new omni-channel digital marketing strategies.
• Drove $1 billion volume increase by implementing new marketing automation solution to enhance sales enablement and promote growth goals, supporting 230+ loan originators.

Executive Experience

• Vice President, Marketing, First American Title
• Chief Marketing Officer, Wintrust Financial
• Vice President, Brand Strategy, Content & Digital Marketing, Adtalem Global Education  
• Professor, Marketing & Graphic Arts, The Art Institutes
• Founder, Managing Director, Cadence Communications & Consulting

Education

• BS, Advertising, Ball State University
• Pursuing MBA, Keller Graduate School of Management
• LDIOE, Stanford University Graduate School of Business

Testimonials

“Dawn is a results-oriented change agent with a very high sense of urgency. I saw her build out a strong, high-functioning team and their infrastructure from the ground up to position the entire company for success. Further, she was able to mature the entire marketing tech stack to better support the sales team and drive increased profitability and efficiency. Beyond that, she has an impressive ability to listen, interpret and solution problems – quickly and creatively.”

Sue Woodard – Mortgage and FinTech Evangelist | Senior Advisor, STRATMOR Group

 

“Dawn was brought on board to transform our traditional and dated marketing approach; to evaluate and upgrade our staff, resources, and capabilities so that we could produce highly effective strategic marketing to help grow our business. Her first success involved execution of an effective reorganization; a new marketing structure including roles, functions, and disciplines. The result of the departmental reorganization was nothing short of transformative. The second major accomplishment involved deployment of an automated marketing solution. Dawn led this initiative from start to finish – vendor review and approval, user needs data collection, RFP, project planning, system configuration, project management oversight, testing, training and ultimately rollout. Subsequent feedback from the sales team was very positive and the growth in our business and market share last year was exceptional.”

David Hrobon – Former Chairman and CEO, Wintrust Mortgage | Principal, STRATMOR Group

 

“Dawn is a strategic marketing leader through and through. She is a sales organization's secret weapon and the support she provides from a marketing perspective truly drives results and gives that extra edge needed to differentiate in a competitive market.”

Stephanie Cohen, National Sales Executive, First American Title

 

“Dawn translates business goals into marketing strategies. She also builds and scales high-performing teams and initiatives to turn around businesses and drive growth.”

Sharon Spooler, Managing Partner, Chief Outsiders

 

"Dawn is hands down the best strategic and results focused marketing leader that I have ever worked with. Her ability to lead the marketing team, collaborate across all levels of the organization while balancing analytics & creativity are inspiring for all. Dawn knows her stuff, is talented and committed."

Angie Marks, National Director of Sales, First American Title

 

"Dawn is a talented, highly motivated marketer, who works tirelessly for her brands and her teams to win. She possesses a rare combination of high creativity, tight process and project leadership, and strategic marketing perspective. She builds some of the most engaged, healthy, high-functioning teams, I've ever been a part of helping to lead. She has deep experience in a mix of content marketing, sales support, and strategic communications. Dawn has a passion for finding the consumer truth, and the motivating essence of a brand, and translating that into integrated, consistent stories. Dawn is forward thinking, exploring and embracing new technology and digital innovations, to drive internal efficiencies and consumer impact. As a colleague or peer, you'll be hard pressed to find someone who'll lean in more to engage teams, ignite brands, and drive success."

Jay Pauer, VP of Marketing, Libra Solutions

 

"Had the pleasure of working with Dawn on a new marketing initiative she was launching, and my team was managing for her. She is a hard-charging, execution-focused executive who will get her hands dirty to achieve her outcomes. "Tell me one thing about Dawn that makes her different without telling me one thing about Dawn that's different... I'll go first." I will tell it anyway: as a marketing executive, the one trait she demonstrated time and time again – she's reasonable and fair. Rarely is there a marketing executive that is as reasonable as Dawn. She will consider all factors, and won't base her decisioning on only what she wants. Not only does it make her indescribably easy to work with, but it also adds a calming factor to the team, which in turn actually pumps up motivation and desire – everyone around her wants to do the right thing and focus on the outcomes."

Ray Padilla, Sr. VP, Head of Enterprise Project Management, Wintrust Financial

 

"Dawn has the unique ability to articulate a vision, embody team values, and create an environment which encompasses growth and accomplishments. I’ve had the honor to work with Dawn in the digital marketing space for two organizations in two different industries: higher education and financial services. In both organizations, Dawn led her team with trust, compassion, and integrity. She has a keen eye to build fundamental foundations to accomplish effective business and team goals. I’m in awe of Dawn’s ability to influence her team to run towards business growth, team growth, and individual growth all with clarity and precision. She is the epitome of a fearless leader."

Ashley Sabo, Communications Manager, Wintrust Mortgage

Download Dawn's Resume Here