New Director of TRIO draws from her past to help students with their future

Holly Buchanan Contributing Writer

Pierce College’s new Director of TRIO, Dawn Reed is able to follow her passion for education by helping students achieve a higher education.

For the past 15 years, she has been helping prepare students for college success. In the past, Reed has worked with the city of Seattle to help TRIO students. She was employed by the City of Seattle’s Human Services Department Upward Bound TRIO program. Reed was a counselor for this TRIO program serving low income and first generational college bound students, in six local high schools. She also worked in Tacoma Community College’s Educational Talent Search program.

Reed was born in Honolulu, and raised in Seattle, where she graduated from Chief Sealth High School in 1993.

Since elementary school Reed had been interested in education. “As a child I knew I wanted to be a teacher,” Reed said.

She helped her classmates with their homework and started advising her peers. Although she had the capability of teaching her peers she didn’t have confidence in herself. “No one ever told me I was smart,” Reed said.

Her teachers asked her to join the Honors program in elementary school. “My teachers planted the seeds of encouragement and confidence that I didn’t get from home,” she said.

Reed was raised by a single parent, her mother, while her father was in jail.

She attended Northwest University for two years before she transferred to the University of Alaska Fairbanks on a full-ride basketball scholarship she received after a coach saw her play. In 1998, Reed received her Bachelors of Arts in Social Work with a minor in education, and earned her Master of Business Administration in 2006.

“Majoring in social work helped me to deal with my own personal childhood issues,” Reed said. “In order for me to help youth I needed to first help myself and sort through all my issues.”

In her free time, Reed volunteers as a coach and a mentor at two local nonprofit organizations. Reed coaches an all-girls basketball team through PUSH basketball, along with her daughter, to continue fulfilling her passion for basketball.

She also spends time teaching workshops through Education with a Purpose for the Pacific Islanders, where she works with parents and students to help them understand what they need to do to earn a college degree.