WiserEarth Help Desk

I explore the intersection of design, sustainability and business. In other words: I want to create things that benefit both people and the world.  Trained in all three disciplines and with hands-on experience with a range of complex projects, I’ve acted as a boundary-spanner, cross-disciplinary designer, art director, project manager, producer and artist. 

I apply my experience as a designer to problem solving, drawing from a deep toolkit: from pencils and shop tools to systems thinking and dialogue.  I frequently hear what others at the table don’t pick up, integrate, synthesize and clarify ideas, critique carefully and think strategically.


Details: http://barkingcrickets.org
Studio: http://aylanto.com
Words: http://worldchanging.com
Pictures: http://flickr.com/photos/dawn/

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"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 (BGI) (2007). She apprenticed in green building and policy with the Fisk-Vittori team at the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems (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 contributor to Worldchanging since just after it began, connected by luck, geography and circumstance during the early Viridian heyday. She's a co-author of Worldchanging: A Users Guide for the 21st Century, and has spoken at TEDGlobal 2005 (Oxford UK), Subtle Technologies (Toronto), and Unilever (Sao Paulo). A Canadian liaison for the o2 Global Sustainable Design Network (Toronto/Ontario), she also researches and maintains the 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.

Dawn has recently moved from Toronto to the San Francisco Bay Area. Aylanto, her little design consultancy, is named after 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.