Dawn Vernooy spent over a decade as a tenured English professor at a state university in Pennsylvania, teaching Nineteenth-Century British literature and serving in her faculty union’s leadership. Even before teaching at a public school, she grew up in Arizona and New Mexico, attending schools in the Deer Valley Unified School District and Albuquerque Public School system.

Prior to Walsh Gallegos, Dawn clerked for Chief Justice Nakamura at the New Mexico Supreme Court and for the New Mexico Court of Appeals. She began her law practice as a housing-preservation staff attorney at New Mexico Legal Aid and chaired the local chapter of the National Organization of Legal Service Workers. Whether at New Mexico Legal Aid or here at Walsh Gallegos, Dawn has dedicated her life to the education, stability, and well-being of children.

Dawn earned her law degree from the University of New Mexico School of Law. There, Dawn represented families in kinship guardianship proceedings as a student attorney in the Child and Family Justice Clinic. She was also the recipient of the Seth Montgomery Fellowship for exceptional law students working on poverty-related issues at the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty. Dawn also attended the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and New Mexico State University. At UNL she earned a Doctor of Philosophy and Master of Arts degrees in English, and at NMSU she earned a Bachelor of Arts, also in English.