We’re excited to announce two new additions to the Conway School staff: Dr. Nina Antonetti, Director of Advancement and Strategic Initiatives, and Adrian Dahlin, Director of Admissions and Marketing. “With the addition of these two new staff positions, and the talent and drive Nina and Adrian bring to their roles,” says Director Paul Cawood Hellmund, “we’ll pursue new opportunities related to ecological design, and connect with a larger community of partner and supporters.”
Nina Antonetti Appointed Director of Advancement and Strategic Initiatives
While Nina Antonetti is new to the Conway staff roster, she is not new to the Conway community; she has previously served as visiting historian at the school, and as a visiting critic for student project
presentations. We are thrilled to formally welcome Nina to Conway as Director of Advancement and Strategic Initiatives. “Having taught in higher education for sixteen years,” says Nina, “I am eager to segue from theoretical discussions to practical applications but without losing sight of history and theory. Consequently Conway’s unique balance between the humanities and the real world is a ‘win-win’ career move.”
An architectural and landscape historian, Nina is a founding member of the Landscape Studies Program and the Sustainable Food Studies concentration at Smith College, where she taught courses exploring the histories and theories of sustainable design, environmental justice, food security, sprawl, and urban public space. Nina is also a fellow at the Center for Creative Solutions at Marlboro College, and a founding member of a design collective in Northampton, MA, comprised of seven designers and community developers who share space, exchange ideas, and collaborate on local projects. In addition, she is an international lecturer and scholar whose research has taken her to the Northwest Territories, Sonoran Desert (with Conway!), Caribbean, throughout Europe, and beyond.
Nina sits on the Placemaking Leadership Council, a board of interdisciplinary and innovative professionals working to consolidate and strengthen Placemaking as an international movement, and attended its inaugural meeting this year in Detroit hosted by the Project for Public Spaces. In 2012, she was invited, along with Jane Goodall and Bill McKibben, to be a participant in the Halki, Turkey, Summit on Global Responsibility and Environmental Sustainability, a gathering of activists, scientists, journalists, business leaders, theologians, and academics working across intellectual boundaries.
Kate Cholakis ’11, a graduate of both Smith College and the Conway School, says, “Nina is a pioneer in the fields of design and planning, linking interdisciplinary studies with the built environment in both her university teaching and scholarship. This connection is essential to improving the sustainability of our world, and central to Conway’s mission. She’s an inspiration and an invaluable resource.”
Nina received her doctorate in landscape and architectural history from the Victorian Study Centre, University of London, and has held research positions in the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
“Conway has been cutting edge for more than forty years,” Nina says, “training professionals to plan ahead of the storm rather than design in its aftermath. Conway has been innovating solutions that mainstream America is only now beginning to consider, like sustainable and regenerative design.” She looks forward to developing broad support for Conway’s innovative program.
Adrian Dahlin Appointed Director of Admissions & Marketing
We are pleased to announce a second new appointment to Conway
’s staff: Adrian Dahlin joins us as Director of Admissions and Marketing, a new position at the school. He is a passionate sustainability professional with experience in entrepreneurship, digital marketing, and local government. “I love Conway’s mission and its experiential teaching model,” he says, “and I’m particularly excited about the unfolding potential of the Sustainable Communities Initiative.”
In 2011, Adrian founded Rising Green, a business designed to help students and young professionals establish careers in the sustainability sector. He raised seed funding and assembled a team, which went on to create an online database of green jobs and internships and organize unique recruiting events on college campuses. Adrian’s work on Rising Green was supported by the Compton Mentor Fellowship, awarded to one Tufts graduate each year who demonstrates qualities that might sound familiar to Conway graduates: “Compton Mentor Fellows are individuals who demonstrate imagination, intelligence, integrity, and leadership. [They] are self-starters who show promise of creative achievement and a commitment to compassionate and effective participation in the world community. [They] strive to be thoughtful agents of change and find the task of charting their own learning paths exciting rather than confounding.”
In 2012, Adrian started a digital marketing consultancy, which gave him experience writing marketing plans and social media strategies for an educational nonprofit in Seattle, a bio-based toy startup in the Pioneer Valley, a social blogging platform in Springfield, and other clients. In May 2013, Adrian closed Rising Green to focus on marketing consulting. He also found time in 2013 to help run a summer camp in Maine and an outdoor education center in Colorado.
Adrian received a BS in Political Science and Environmental Studies from Tufts University. In the course of earning his degree, he studied at Principia College for one year, spent a semester in northern India, and traveled through the Middle East with the Center for Ecological Living and Learning. Ask him about building biogas digesters for rural herder families in the West Bank.
Adrian lives in Holyoke, one of the cities where Conway students will take on urban design projects in 2014. He serves as Holyoke’s youngest ever Conservation Commissioner, remains active in the community, and believes deeply in the revitalization of this small, emergent city.
Adrian looks forward to getting to know the extended Conway community as he recruits the class of 2015, develops Conway’s brand image, and helps the organization grow.
Please join us in welcoming Nina and Adrian to the Conway School community!
