She has been commissioned to write for many large companies including Disney, HBO, ABC Family and 20th Century Fox.
Monsoon Wedding, a 2001 film directed by Mira Nair, is one of her earliest and most well known works, launching her screenwriting career.
[3] Her student short film, (Saanjh) As Night Falls, which she made during the last years of her MFA, has been successful since its release in 2000.
[citation needed] Dhawan worked with Mira Nair to create a stage adaptation of Monsoon Wedding which ran at the Berkeley Repertory Theater in California in 2017.
[8] In 2006, Dhawan married Steve Cohen, who wrote the screenplay for The Bachelor (1999) starring Chris O'Donnell and Renée Zellweger.