Dawn Batts leads private market investing at Union Heritage, where she is responsible for early-stage investment strategy, capital allocation, and portfolio construction. Her role centers on how capital is deployed and governed, with an emphasis on disciplined decision-making, long-term value creation, and alignment between investors and founders.

Dawn’s investment approach is shaped by a foundation in finance, operations, and entrepreneurship. She brings a practitioner’s perspective to venture investing, grounded in financial rigor, operating realities, and an understanding of how early-stage companies are built, financed, and scaled. This lens informs how she evaluates opportunities, structures investments, and partners with founders and co-investors.

Dawn is actively engaged in strengthening entrepreneurial ecosystems and expanding participation in early-stage capital. Her ecosystem work focuses on building and scaling angel investor communities regionally and nationally, increasing access to early-stage investment opportunities, and helping design capital pathways that address structural gaps in local markets. In her current, as well as previous roles, she has contributed to the development of collaborative investment models that align public, philanthropic, and private capital to support early-stage founders.

Dawn serves as Vice Chair of the Angel Capital Association and is a gubernatorial appointee to the Michigan Early-Stage Venture Investment Corporation Board. She is also a co-founder of Milestone Growth Capital Institute, an organization dedicated to strengthening early-stage capital pathways, and serves on Living Cities’ Inclusive Capital Council.

Dawn holds a B.A. in Accounting from Michigan State University, an MBA from the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, and a PhD in Business and Cultural Anthropology from Wayne State University.