Avalon leads our talent platform. She partners with Dawn’s founders on building the teams that shape category defining companies across the growth journey.

While studying History of Art at Cambridge, I spent years immersed in the lives and works of creative geniuses: how they operated, who shaped them, what conditions allowed extraordinary things to emerge. I thought I'd build a career in the art world, and started out doing exactly that, running PR campaigns at a cultural communications agency.

But the more I looked at the question of what produces incredible innovation, the more I noticed it playing out somewhere unexpected: in tech. The founders building category-defining companies today are, to my mind, the Leonardos and Michelangelos of this generation - original thinkers capable of pulling exceptional people into their orbit. Helping them assemble the teams that turn a vision into a company is the most interesting work I can imagine doing.

That's what I do at Dawn. I lead our talent platform, partnering with our founders and their teams on leadership hiring and the wider talent agenda. The best part of the job is operating as a genuine member of our founders' teams while also drawing on the patterns we see across the portfolio and broader ecosystem - spotting the growth challenges that tend to emerge a stage or two ahead, and helping our founders prepare for them. Talent, leadership and what it takes to scale are the areas I obsess over, and where I spend the most time.

Before Dawn, I sat in the technology team at Russell Reynolds Associates, where I built my foundation in leadership advisory. Outside of work, my time goes to family and close friends, and to the Almeida Theatre in Islington, where I sit on the development board.