Dawn Valdez, RN, LNC, CDIP, CCDS, is a CDI education specialist for ACDIS at HCPro, a division of Simplify Compliance LLC, in Middleton, Massachusetts. Valdez serves as a full-time instructor for the CDI Boot Camps and a subject matter expert for ACDIS. She has more than 25 years of experience in the healthcare industry including in ICU nursing, legal nurse consulting, and as a nurse manager for a large third-party administrator for which she initiated a nurse audit program. Prior to joining ACDIS, she was a clinical educator and manager of CDI for a large hospital system, where she conducted training, managed CDI staff, performed staff audits, and provided educational classes to both coding and CDI professionals. Valdez has given numerous lectures on healthcare-related topics over the last two decades, including at the national ACDIS conference and a number of ACDIS state chapters. She is a frequent guest on The ACDIS Podcast and has had several articles published in CDI Strategies as well as HCPro’s JustCoding.