Toban Shadlyn

Toban Shadlyn is a strategic designer and educator. Her work focuses on fostering transdisciplinary collaborations, driving systemic transitions, and enabling place-based transformation. She partners with local, regional, and national governments, academic and research institutions, philanthropic foundations, and community-based organizations worldwide on critical topics such as healthcare, education, public policy, and urban development.

A founding member of the Center for Complexity at the Rhode Island School of Design, Toban helped establish a platform for cross-sector innovation, leveraging creative practices to navigate complex systemic challenges. She began her career in Interior Architecture, focusing on adaptive reuse in the built environment, before transitioning her design expertise to the public sector to engage with larger-scale systems and policy work. As an educator, Toban has held teaching positions at the Rhode Island School of Design and the University of Michigan, and continues to serve as a guest lecturer and critic at academic institutions including the Royal College of Art in London and the Istituto Europeo di Design in Barcelona. Her work has been featured in various academic and professional forums, and she continues to contribute to global conversations on design, systems innovation, and education.