Dominique Dawes is a retired American artistic Olympic gymnast. At the age of 12, she was sent to Australia to compete in her first international meet, the Konica Grand Prix. By the early 1990s, Dawes was achieving success both nationally and internationally. She placed 3rd in the all-around in the junior division at the 1990 U.S. National Championships

Dawes is also notable as being the first African-American woman to win an individual Olympic medal in artistic gymnastics, and the first black person of any nationality or gender to win an Olympic-gold-medal in gymnastics.[3] She is also one of only three female American gymnasts, along with Muriel Grossfeld and Linda Metheny-Mulvihill, to compete in three Olympics and was part of their medal-winning teams: Barcelona 1992 (bronze), Atlanta 1996 (gold), and Sydney 2000 (bronze). She is also the Olympic bronze medalist on floor exercise from the Atlanta games. Dawes was a 10-year member of the U.S. national gymnastics team, the 1994 U.S. all-around senior National Champion, a three-time Olympian, a World Championship silver and bronze medalist, and a member of the gold-medal-winning "Magnificent Seven" team at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.

She has served on the Advisory Board of Sesame Workshop's "Healthy Habits for Life" program and also works as a motivational speaker, concentrating on youth issues. Dawes appeared with gymnasts Nadia Comăneci and Simone Biles in a commercial for Tide called "The Evolution of Power" prior to the 2016 Summer Olympics