Tanya Dawkins

Alum 2006 | Alum 2009

Tanya Dawkins is a Miami-based strategist, artist, advocate, and global citizen. She believes that law, policy, facts, and figures are indispensable in the work of creating a better world. So are art, design, film, music, inspiration, and creativity.

In her art practice, Tanya develops unique artworks, concepts, and commissions inspired by community, family, and movements for freedom, democracy, and human rights around the world. In her Homage to Wangari Maathai mixed media art series, for example, she honors the life and work of the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Dr. Maathai founded the Greenbelt Movement and used innovative, large scale tree planting campaigns to mobilize and educate poor and rural women about the environment, economic development, climate change, women’s rights, and the centrality of women’s leadership. Each painting in the series features a single, beautiful and ornate tree designed to honor the idea that simple individual and collective action – like planting a tree – can transform a life, a community, our environment, or launch a movement. The series is part of Tanya’s broader commitment to create art, writing, and other projects that celebrate the inspiration, ideas, and innovations from the movements for freedom, democracy, and human rights that have touched her life and are transforming the world.

Tanya has traveled extensively and has been the recipient of a number of prestigious fellowships, residencies, and public service awards, including the 2017 Blue Mountain Center Visual Artist-in-Residence fellowship. She is also completing a book project entitled, Revolutionary Matters: How and Why Citizens are Becoming the Next Global Superpower.

As an advocate and analyst, Tanya is dedicated to developing a new generation of “globally minded, community‐centric” innovations in leadership, policy, law, citizen action, art, economic development, and the social contract. She has designed and developed a number of initiatives focused on engaging one of the most pressing issues of our time ‐ what it means to build citizen and community power in an age of intensifying globalization(s).

Tanya is an experienced analyst, executive, and consultant in the areas of leadership, policy and innovation for the common good. Her work has helped a wide range of local, national and international partners and clients map their strategic priorities, understand and interpret increasingly interconnected global and local phenomena and manage emergent issues and opportunities.

Tanya has an MBA from Barry University and a post-graduate certificate in international human rights law from Oxford University. She has previously managed a $20+ million community investment portfolio and is active in a diverse network of campaigns and initiatives in the areas of human rights, governance, policy, economic development, philanthropy, and social justice.

Find out more on her website.