Our Founder

Prior to becoming the Founder of Girl Vow, Inc. Dawn was once slated for an alternative to the incarceration education program and placed in drop-out prevention during her high school years while suffering from family turmoil. The fear of being placed in an institutional setting coupled with parental abandonment would cause Dawn to drop out of high school. However, the love for academics and the push from mentors would cause Dawn to attend an alternative high school; where she received her high school diploma. The earlier academic conflicts still haunt Dawn because the system that indicated her never stopped to inquire about her. When we look at the cost of NYC youth detention, failing educational systems, endemic poverty, and an overburdened foster care system the tone of indictment loudly resonates in our strained communities. When we preliminarily indict our youth, society turns the light on into a criminalistics/homeless pathway that can’t be escaped.

Girl Vow, Inc. was birthed as Dawn’s passion to intervene in each one of the aforementioned social dilemmas. Dawn wants to save as many girls as she can the way others have saved her. In her professional career Dawn is a faculty member at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, MCNY, a certified Institutional Review Board (IRB) researcher, youth motivational speaker, and the former Vice President of a large not-for-profit in New York. Dawn worked for the District Attorney’s Office, in youth development, interned at the Department of Juvenile Justice, and worked within the foster care system. Dawn holds a dual Bachelor’s Degree in Deviant Behavior and Criminology from John Jay College, a Master of Arts in Sociology from Brooklyn College, and a Master’s of Science in Higher Education Administration from the Baruch College City University of New York. Please follow her on instagram @iamdawnrowe to see how she continues to put her life to work.