Dawn Airey was born in Lancashire in 1960 and was educated at Kelly College and Girton College, Cambridge. Dawn joined British Sky Broadcasting in January 2003 as Managing Director of Sky Networks. Her responsibilities include airtime sales and all of Sky's non-sports programming. Her portfolio of channels includes Sky One, Sky News, Sky Movies and Sky Travel.

Dawn has worked in television for 20 years, since joining Central TV as a management trainee in 1985. Early in her career, in 1988, she was the controller of programme planning at Central TV, and became director the following year. In 1993, Dawn was the controller of children's and daytime programmes at ITV, and moved to Channel 4 a year later to be the controller of arts and entertainment. Dawn joined Channel 5 as director of programmes in 1996, and became Chief Executive in 2000.

She was awarded a Fellowship by the Royal Television Society in June 1998 and, in 2003, she took over the Executive Chair of the Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival. Dawn is a Trustee of the Media Trust and a director of the Community Channel. Dawn is also a non-executive director of easyJet PLC.