Dawn 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.
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
often collaborates 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 WorldChanging contributor 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). A
Canadian liaison for the
o2 Global Sustainable Design Network (Toronto/Ontario), she also occasionally maintains her
sustainable/design/portal as a resource site for product designers.
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 Torontonian living in the San Francisco Bay Area, Dawn works on sustainable design strategy and marvels at the sunlight.
Aylanto, her design consultancy, is named for the
the
ailanthus altissima, best of the urban ruderal species.
Invasive, heatseeking, alley-dwelling and concrete-devouring, they
delight in inhabiting and remediating a broken landscape.
More at
Barking Crickets.
Say hi.