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Donor spotlight: Dawn Baddeley
When Dawn Baddeley talks about nursing, she doesn't talk about it as a job. She talks about it as a calling that started when she was 14 years old, volunteering at a hospital in her hometown of Chicago. That calling carried her through more than three decades of caring for children, families, and eventually, the nurses who care for them.
Now, together with her husband, Chris, she has made a gift establishing the Nursing Wellness Fund, a new initiative aimed at helping Gillette Children's nurses and nurse leaders build the resilience they need for one of healthcare's most demanding jobs.
A career built on care
Dawn retired from Gillette a year and a half ago, after a career that started with a nursing role in pediatric intensive care. She went on to earn her master's degree and moved into a leadership role at Lurie Children's Hospital in Chicago. When Chris's career brought the family to Minnesota, Dawn spent several years in clinical nursing at Fairview, before an opportunity brought her back to hospital leadership: the PICU nurse manager role at Gillette. Joining Gillette in 2011, Dawn took on progressively broader leadership roles before finishing her career as Gillette’s VP of Hospital Operations and Chief Nurse Executive.
Along the way, Dawn watched the nursing profession change, growing well beyond its clinical roots. Today's nurses are also expected to be culturally competent and to help coordinate a family's return home, including school reentry, transportation, housing, and food support.
"There's a whole social world that is now part of hospitalizations that nurses have to get involved with," Dawn said. "You can't do any of that without your team."
That teamwork, she said, is what sets Gillette apart. "Each department puts the patient as number one," she said. "If you all start with that common goal, why wouldn't you work together well?"
A fund born from firsthand experience
The idea for the Nursing Wellness Fund grew out of conversations with Gillette's philanthropy team, which helped Dawn and Chris focus their gift on something personally meaningful.
During her years in nursing leadership, Dawn tracked Gillette's participation in a University of Minnesota and Hennepin County study on stress and burnout among healthcare workers. She saw where there were opportunities to do more for staff well-being, but the resources weren't always there. Then the pandemic added new strain on an already demanding profession.
"You have to be happy, healthy employees to provide good service," Dawn said. "If you're not happy in your work, or you're stressed out, you're not going to be able to give the best to the patients."
The fund is designed to support nurses and nurse leaders alike, particularly those managing multiple units and dozens of staff through unpredictable days. In 2026 alone, the fund will send a surgical services charge nurse to a national leadership program, provide leadership books for a nurse executive-led book club, and offer Positive Intelligence training and coaching to nurse managers and directors.
For Dawn, the goal is straightforward: to give nurses better tools to cope with the stress that comes with the job, so they can keep giving their best to patients and families and build lasting careers at Gillette. "They'll stay longer," she said. "They'll be happier in their roles. They will be lifers."
A shared commitment
Chris has been by Dawn's side through all of it. While Chris isn't a healthcare professional himself, he has long had a soft spot for Gillette, volunteering at hospital events and celebrating the successes of coworkers' children who received care there.
For Dawn and Chris, giving to Gillette was never really a question. "We love Gillette," Dawn says. "There was just no question that we were going to do something."
Their gift, and the Nursing Wellness Fund it created, is already at work supporting the people who are the heartbeat of Gillette’s care: our nurses.
