Stephanie Dawson grew up in northern California and studied Biology at Yale University. She then worked at the labs of Susan Parkhurst at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle WA and Ralph Rupp at the MPG Friedrich Miescher Laboratory, Tübingen, Germany before changing fields and getting a PhD in German Literature from the University of Washington under Jane Brown. From 2001-2012 she worked in various positions at the academic publisher De Gruyter in Berlin in the fields of biology and chemistry in both journals and book publishing. In 2013 she took on the role of managing director for ScienceOpen GmbH in Berlin.