Chris Dawson - Northwest Passage Program Director
Chris Dawson grew up in Wilmington, Delaware, where he spent years drawing pictures of mountains. After graduating from Bucknell University he joined the Peace Corps to teach English in Yemen where he finally experienced mountains that looked like the ones he had been drawing all those earlier years. The Yemeni mountains were jagged and sharp and rocky, and they talked to him. Two years in Yemen gave Chris a thirst for travel that has only grown. After returning from Yemen, Chris discovered VISIONS and spent five summers staffing and leading programs in Pennsylvania and Montana. The Montana landscape spoke to Chris even more directly than Yemen. After a few summers on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation, he made Montana his home and eventually married a native Montanan.
For the past 20 plus years, Chris has taught in a preschool, a middle school, a high school, and an elementary school. He is raising a daughter, running half marathons, writing, and traveling every chance he gets. Ironically, it was Chris's wife's career that brought Chris back East to New Haven, Connecticut, where he teaches sixth grade in a small independent school. Chris has visited the Northern Cheyenne Reservation most summers since 1994 and is thrilled to be directing a VISIONS program there once again.
In his spare time Chris likes to run, read, update his blog, travel, play with his dog and his daughter, Isabelle, and work on crossword puzzles with his amazing partner, Erica, who is the butter on his popcorn.