Dawn Ennis

Dawn Ennis (she/her/hers) is the WSLS 10 News morning newscast’s multi-platform executive producer, as well as an award-winning writer, veteran TV news producer and manager, digital news pro and public relations specialist. She has worked as a newsroom executive, creative coach, hiring manager and on-air talent. Ennis has more than four decades of experience in network, local and digital newsrooms.
She taught journalism, advertising, public relations, sports broadcasting, podcasting and media literacy at the University of Hartford for nearly seven years and also managed its state of the art podcast studio. She earned her Master’s Degree in Communications and graduated summa cum laude in 2024, and in 2025 she taught communications at Connecticut State Community College. She served as chapter president of the faculty union, The 4Cs SEIU 1973.
Ennis received the Connecticut Voice Profile In Courage Award at The Bushnell Performing Arts Center in 2024. NYC Pride honored the native New Yorker as a Community Hero in 2018.
Her work as a contributor to Forbes earned her the 2022 GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Online Journalism. In 2023, she was part of the team at the Los Angeles Blade and Washington Blade honored with GLAAD’s Barbara Gittings Award for Excellence in Queer Media.
She hosted as well as reported for “Connecticut Voice Out Loud” on WTNH-TV. She hosted and produced the award-winning “RiseUP With Dawn Ennis” talk show on WHC-TV from 2017 to 2023.
Her work regularly appeared in Connecticut Voice Magazine, the Washington Blade, the Los Angeles Blade, The Daily Beast, Out Magazine and StarTrek.com, among other publications.
In 2013, Ennis was the first journalist in network TV news to come out as transgender. She subsequently served as the first out trans editor at The Advocate Magazine, LGBTQ Nation and at Outsports, which she led as managing editor and podcast team manager for 2 1⁄2 years.
Before coming out, Ennis was an Emmy Award-winning writer, producer and news manager in the newsrooms of ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC, as well at TV stations across the country. Nine years after leaving ABC, she returned to TV news in September 2023 as a senior newscast producer at the TEGNA-owned WTIC-TV in Hartford, also known as FOX61. In August 2025, she joined the team at Nexstar’s Queen City News in Charlotte, North Carolina as acting supervising producer and joined WSLS-TV in Roanoke, Virginia in November 2025.
She served as a member of the board of directors at West Hartford Pride and in the same role at the Triangle Community Center as well as the co-chair of the West Hartford Human Rights Commission. Ennis is not an activist but she does advocate for civil rights and is a lifetime member of the NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists as well as the Trans Journalists Association, the Society of Professional Journalists and other organizations.
For a dozen years, she worked as a successful child model and actor in New York City. A “Reach Out and Touch Someone” ad for AT&T in which she appeared won a Clio Award in 1979.
Ennis is a widow and single mom to three grown children, their dog Dahlia and their cat Faith.