Alumni Spotlight

Dawn Jackson Blatner

Dawn Jackson Blatner is an exceptionally loyal and accomplished alumna, who earned her Bachelor of Science in 1997 for Food Science and Human Nutrition with a concentration in Dietetics.

After beginning her professional career as a registered dietitian at Northwestern Memorial Hospital Wellness Institute in Chicago, Dawn later opened her own business, called Dawn Nutrition Strategies, LLC, which she still owns today. During this time she wrote a book called the Flexitarian Diet, promoting the "flexitarian" approach, which encourages more vegetarian meals. In addition, Dawn is the nutrition consultant for the Chicago Cubs, a food and nutrition blogger with USA Today and Huffington Post, and a nutrition expert on the advisory board of Fitness magazine.

Aside from professional responsibilities, Dawn works with UIC students in being a preceptor for one of the dietetic internship rotations. She also fields phone calls from University of Illinois students in the dietetic program about trends in dietetics and is a resource for projects. Dawn's work is part of the program's marketing, and willingly provides her support and permission to let the program use her work in the promotion of the dietetics program.

Dawn also appears regularly in national media outlets such as The Dr. Oz Show, USA Today, Dateline, Newsweek, Cooking Light, Lifetime Television and WebMD. Dawn has a healthy eating television segment on NBC Chicago called "Take a Bite", a monthly column in Today's Chicago Woman magazine, and is an instructor at the Chopping Block where she teaches healthy cooking classes. She recently won the Lifetime Television 2011 "Remarkable Woman Award" for her work in the field of nutrition.

Dawn states "Earning my ACES degree gave me a solid foundation of food & nutrition science mixed with practical application that allowed me to confidently enter my dietetics career."

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