Bethany Dawson is the senior program manager for Brighter Bites in Austin. She leads the operations and management of the Austin programming team.

Bethany discovered Brighter Bites at the UT Health Science Center School of Public Health in Houston while working on her Master’s of Public Health in Epidemiology. She joined Dr. Shreela Sharma’s research team as a graduate assistant in 2014, and after graduating with her MPH in 2015 she jumped at the opportunity to move to Austin to join Brighter Bites’ Austin launch team full-time.

Bethany was born and raised in Brownsville, Texas. She holds a B.S. in Biology from Trinity University in San Antonio and also served a year as an AmeriCorps member with City Year San Antonio, where she worked as a full-time math tutor in a low-income middle school. Bethany serves on the 2020 Board of Directors for the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network of Austin and is an active member of the Community Collaborative for Child Health, Directors of Volunteers in Austin, and the Austin-Travis County Food Policy Board’s Healthy Food Access Working Group.

In her free time, Bethany loves playing board games, walking/running the trail along the lake, and working out with the outdoor fitness program, Camp Gladiator. She makes it a point to travel to at least one new place every year and to learn about new cultures through their foods. Bethany attempts to stay connected to her own roots by drooling over the Great British Bake-Off and trying her best to replicate her mom’s delicious, healthy cooking.