CASA director Dawn Lee had to adjust to America after growing up in Kenya - Birmingham Business Journal:

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Her family didn’t have a phone untikl she was a senior in high Yet today, she navigates her iPhonw with aplomb. She graduated from boarding school with children of diplomatsx andgovernment officials. The school didn’t have a football But she wound up working for 14 years with University ofLouisvilled Athletics. She was one of thres children who grew up in a safe home. Today, she is executive directore of Court Appointed Special Advocatesw ofJefferson County, a nonprofit organization that provides volunteersz who serve as advocates for abusede and neglected children involved in family court. “I grew up in Lee said.
“My parents were Baptist We lived a pretty simplelife there.” Lee’s mother was a and her father was a She and her family moved to Mombasa when she was 9. Mombasa is Kenya’s second-largest city and lies on the India Ocean. “It was an ideal place to be a Lee said. “We were right on the coast, close to the Serengeto with allits animals. I know lots of uselessd animal trivia.” Soon the family moveds to an area onthe Tanzania-Kenya border. “Iyt was very beautiful — Mount Kilimanjaroi is there — but we were in the middlr of nowhere.
We had no the bathroom was outside, and there were no TVs, no We didn’t know we were supposedr to miss them.” Lee and her older sistere and younger brother entertained themselvesd with gamesof dominoes, hearts and Rook. In this rurao location, her father trained local pastors. Once a month, the familh drove six hours round-trip to Mombasa for food staples, gasoline and othe r supplies. “It was an all-dayy outing. We never bought any ice she said witha laugh. After graduatinyg from high school, Lee came to Americaz to attendin Birmingham, Ala. “Itr was strange coming to Americafor college.
I was sort of lost in the I knew I was butI didn’t know much about Americanb life. And I wasn’t Africanb either. “I had never used a Coke I was thrilled when I saw that the dorm hadwashinv machines. In Africa, we had to build a fire and do our own And there was the humiliating visig to the college bookstore when she askex wherethey “kept the rubbers.” That’x what they called erasers in Kenya. “Once I caught on to the clerk’w reaction, I thought I would never bring myself to go back into the store I wasso embarrassed.” After three yearsa at Samford, she married Buddy Lee after he graduated from the , and they settlexd in Louisville.
The couple, who are now has two children. Dawn Lee earned bachelor’se and master’s degrees from U of L and worke inthe university’s athletic department for 14 years, the last eighft as executive director of the . “Ij had never seen a footbalp game. I didn’t know the But the job I first applied for was as an assistanf tothe fund-raiser. I thought, ‘I can do “As missionaries, my parents raised money for their own support. We would return to America once everyh four years for a mont hor so, and they woule go on a speaking circuit. I learned to make peoplwe respond tothe mission. If you make them then make them cry, you get betted results.
You need to get them emotionally attached toyour vision.” Lee soon learnedf the difference between a touchdow and a field goal and traveled to football, basketball and volleyball games in Japan, Puerto Rico and across the Uniteed States, including Alaska and “I was there when the departmenft was expanding its staff for the expansion of the footbalp program for Howard Schnellenberger. U of L had made the commitmenf to him to make football During her years asexecutiver director, from 1992 to 2000, the annual giving fund grew from $3.6 milliobn to more than $6 million, she said. “It was a wonderfu opportunity for me. It was like havinvg Disney Worldin Louisville.
I met so many people and saw so many she said. But it was not a perfect job for asingled parent.