Courtney Dawson is the Chief Marketing Officer at CaringKind, where she leads the organization’s marketing and communications strategy and has helped shape many of its most impactful initiatives over the past four years, including its brand evolution, Connect2Living, and 100 Women of Impact. With more than 25 years of experience spanning nonprofit leadership, venture capital, political strategy, and large-scale brand and event production, she is known for pairing creative vision with operational rigor to elevate organizations and amplify mission-driven work. Her leadership in brain health, however, is rooted deeply in lived experience.

Courtney’s connection to Alzheimer’s began in 2000 with her grandfather. She later spent seven years managing the care of Susan until her passing in 2021. During that time, became an advocate for Susan and the family surrounding her- finding ways to sustain communication, preserve dignity, and help them continue to live, love, and understand one another as the disease progressed.

That experience reshaped her understanding of care, dignity, and the responsibility we share in helping people remain connected to themselves and to those they love.

Through her own health journey, living with autoimmune illness and surviving severe complications during COVID, she confronted the fragility of the body, the urgency of time, and the resilience required to begin again. Recovery changed how she understood healing. Helping others tell their stories helped her reclaim her own. She came to believe that telling our stories, being witnessed, and refusing to endure hardship alone is not just healing—it is how we rebuild ourselves and one another. We do not recover alone; we recover in relationship, in honesty, and in the act of being seen.

That belief now shapes her work and creative vision, where shared experience becomes a source of collective strength, bridging strategy and humanity. Through collaboration, creativity, and purpose-driven leadership, she supports initiatives that reflect how people live with dementia—not just how they are treated—centering connection, dignity, and community.

Courtney believes leadership begins with the courage to be seen and to see others fully. When women lead with empathy, authenticity, and conviction, they don’t just shape programs or campaigns – they shape culture, change systems, and transform lives.