Emilee Dunn

Event Coordinator

Emilee is the Event Coordinator on the Event Team at NIET, bringing over a decade of experience in strategic event planning and execution. She plays a key role in leading the development and delivery of NIET’s high-impact events—from national conferences and professional development sessions to leadership retreats and special engagements. Known for her operational excellence and creative problem-solving, Emilee ensures that every event reflects NIET’s commitment to empowering educators, supporting school leaders, and advancing student achievement.

Throughout her career, Emilee has led large-scale, client-facing events across the country, working closely with cross-functional teams to align event experiences with broader organizational goals. Her background includes managing events for nationally recognized organizations, where she was responsible for complex logistics, executive-level programming, and multi-million-dollar budgets. These roles helped shape her approach to events: focused, intentional, people-centered, and rooted in adaptability.

Her strengths lie in connecting vision with execution—bringing ideas to life through detailed planning, seamless coordination, and an unwavering dedication to excellence. Whether supporting NIET’s training initiatives or coordinating gatherings that bring educators together to collaborate and grow, she thrives on creating meaningful experiences that leave a lasting impact.

Emilee has a natural ability to organize, plan, and bring people together—a strength that has grown into a rewarding career centered around connection, creativity, and service. Born and raised in Arizona, she graduated from Northern Arizona University and has remained passionate about using her skills to create purposeful experiences that inspire and support others. Now, through her work at NIET, she’s proud to contribute to events that help educators, schools, and districts make lasting improvements in teaching and learning.

 Emilee  Dunn

Who is your favorite teacher?

In elementary school, I had an outstanding 4th-grade teacher, Ms. Jean. Ms. Jean had a skill of connecting with her students, and although we were only in elementary school, she had a way of making us feel like we were seen and we were important. So much so that Ms. Jean petitioned the school to take our class through 5th and 6th grade as well! She taught responsibility through class pets, shared her love and passion for the state of Arizona, and met students where they were at with love and connection to earn our trust and have the best chance of successfully teaching us – no matter what lesson it was.
Continuing my education at Northern Arizona University (NAU), I had two amazing professors in the School of Communication Merchandising Program, Kris Swanson and Judith Everett. These teachers truly taught me the importance in striving for excellence in everything you do. Kris and Judy displayed clear expectations for their classes and shared with us their desire to see us succeed. Not only did they require pristine presentations, strongly written papers, and high scores on tests, but this pair poured into their students, teaching us life skills as well. I credit both Kris and Judy with providing me the well-rounded experience all students desire during my time at NAU, and find myself referring to lessons around professionalism, communication, critical thinking, discipline, and more… all of which they taught me while in their classes.

What is your superpower/hidden talent?

My superpower is being able to see the invisible — the tiny details that others might overlook but can make or break an event experience. Whether it's anticipating a potential AV issue before it happens or remembering a VIP guest’s favorite beverage, I have an ability to forecast needs and smooth out friction points before they’re even noticeable. That attention to detail has helped me execute successful events, even under pressure.
My hidden talent is turning chaos into calm. Events are full of moving parts, shifting expectations, and sometimes last-minute curveballs. I have a knack for quickly assessing a situation, rallying the right people, and creating clarity under pressure. Teams I have worked with often say I’m the one who keeps everyone grounded, even when everything around us is changing.