Dawn Sanders

Executive Chef

Dawn Sanders

Dawn was born and raised just outside of Washington, DC in Maryland, and graduated from Bowie High School and attended college in Maryland. She started her family there with her two beautiful daughters, Kaytlyn and Jada. Her youngest daughter, Jada, loves Hamby and is the company’s honorary mascot.

Dawn has a strong background in business – she was both a business owner of Blooms Florist near Annapolis, MD and a Real Estate firm in Bowie, MD, while producing multi-million dollars yearly in renovation investment properties.

However, she’s always loved cooking – it’s always been her first love. I became a bar manager while working her way into the culinary scene and became lead Chef at the Pomo Grill, a restaurant owned by the Four Seasons Group in Bowie, MD.

She then relocated and moved to Charleston. Once here, while searching for a Chef position, she finished up at The Art Institute in Charleston and joined the Magnolia team working under Chef Kelly Franz. She rose through the ranks to Sous Chef whilst at Magnolia, and served on the team for five years.

She started with Hamby in 2016 as the Off-Site Event Chef until moving into the main commercial production kitchen, and worked her way up to the Executive Chef position in 2021.

Her favorite thing about Hamby is the wonderful team she has to work with – it’s much more than a team, they’re family! Hamby’s culinary team has such a passion for the next evolving and leading culinary trends which makes chef life fun & exciting.

The Kitchen bond that Hamby’s built with each other makes it feel more like fun and less like work, and she loves the caring and hard work ethic the entire staff has and continues to build and grow with each other.

She currently resides in West Ashley with her family. She has a spoiled Mini Shih Tzu named Romeo, a Brown Lab named Malibu and an adopted Jack Russell named Juice. Her passion is feeding and helping the homeless, which she does whenever she has free time.