An Update from MIT CoLab Executive Director Dayna L. Cunningham

Pictured: MIT CoLab Executive Director Dayna L. Cunningham

To my friends, my colleagues, and my beloved community —

It is bittersweet to share with you today that — effective July 1 — I will be moving on from this incredible chapter of my life here at MIT CoLab to take on an exciting new role as Dean of the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University.

I am overcome with powerful memories about the incredible work we’ve accomplished together in the years since I first came to CoLab. And as I work with our team and larger community to ensure a smooth transition and help identify a dynamic successor, I want to assure you that all of this extremely important work will continue.

Going places where strategic planning can support more equitable solutions, we’ve worked with faculty and placed students in hotspots of crisis: New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2008; Haiti after the 2010 earthquake; the Colombian Amazon in the wake of a 2017 environmental disaster. This spring we partnered with groups in Colombia to support farmer's markets for emergency aid in its national strike for better lives.

We’ve also worked in the Bronx after a failed plan to turn the world’s largest armory into a shopping center offering dead-end, low-wage retail jobs. We’ve worked in East Brooklyn in the face of a threatened closure of a critically needed safety-net hospital. And as access to capital remains a critical challenge in marginalized communities, we’ve worked with socially innovative banks seeking to invent new financial tools and practices that serve the real economy in marginalized communities.

Any and everywhere we are, our students, faculty and community have played a vital role, providing hands-on planning support to communities seeking a meaningful say in shaping their own development trajectory based on the knowledge of the community itself. And, over the years, students have consistently identified CoLab as the go-to place for grounding their educational experience in real-world problem-solving. I have no doubt that this will continue long after my transition thanks to the talented and capable members of our team and the passionate community partners we’ve gained over the years.

Students today want to make an impact in the world and they want to do it now — to leave with practical skills they can quickly deploy to make a difference in confronting the global challenges they will inherit. And in disruptive moments of change such as these, we go places where we are asked to go because people have a challenge that they want to address. And then we work with them to figure out what is most urgent and what will be the response.

So I must thank you; thank you for your work, your passion, your tenacity, your support, your friendship and, most of all, your commitment to serving and centering communities at the margins. I ask that you continue your support CoLab enters its next phase. And I very much look forward to working shoulder to shoulder with you in the future — any and everywhere we are called to do this critical work.

Dayna