d a w n d a n b y


D A W N   D A N B Y   explores the intersection of design, sustainability and business. Which is a fancy way of saying that she wants the things we make to benefit both people and the world.

An industrial designer by training, she's a boundary-spanner and synthesist who has acted as a cross-disciplinary designer, strategist, art director, project manager, producer and artist. She currently manages Autodesk's Sustainable Design Program, integrating sustainable thinking into the digital tools used by 9 million designers and engineers worldwide.

"As a designer, Danby's goals are down to earth and practical: to develop environmentally sustainable systems and products that change the way we experience the things around us."
(Julia Dault put it nicely.)

Dawn holds a design degree from the Rhode Island School of Design (2000), and an MBA in Sustainable Business from the Bainbridge Graduate Institute (2007). She apprenticed in green building and policy with the Fisk-Vittori team at CMPBS, and in furniture design with Macek Furniture. She collaborated with international artist Noel Harding on Windsor, Ontario's Green Corridor initiative, where she helped teach an interdisciplinary course at the University of Windsor. She designed a $3.5M tree-covered, wind-powered pedestrian bridge on the US-Canada border, has developed closed-loop manufacturing strategies for a leading outdoor footwear manufacturer, and helped establish a public art master plan for a major american airport.

Dawn has been a contributor to WorldChanging.com since just after it began, connected by luck, geography and circumstance during the early Viridian heyday. She's a co-author of WorldChanging: A User's Guide to the 21st Century, and has spoken at TEDGlobal 2005: Ideas big enough to change the world (Oxford UK), Doors of Perception (Delhi), Subtle Technologies (Toronto), and ICFF (NYC). In 2007, her team was awarded a competition fellowship with the Royal Society of Arts (UK) and was a runner-up in Metropolis magazine's NEXT Generation design competition.

Other hats: secret identity as a medical illustrator for numerous books and journals, specializing in women's health; former and future art-maker and singer.

A Canadian in San Francisco, she took the long road overland to reach the ocean. Aylanto, her design consultancy (in hibernation), is named for the the ailanthus altissima, best of the urban ruderal species. Invasive, heatseeking, alley-dwelling and concrete-devouring, they delight in inhabiting a broken landscape.

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barking crickets = small things making loud noises (clearly a joke that got out of hand.)