What's Possible E.4: MIT CoLab Director Dayna Cunningham

Sustainable Communities Network

What's Possible: With Jonathan Lash Episode 4: Dayna Cunningham

In this episode of What’s Possible, Jonathan speaks with MIT CoLab Executive Director Dayna Cunningham. They discuss how the CoLab works with communities to co-create solutions driven by community insight and innovation, and supported by MIT’s technical expertise.

This type of partnership reflects recognition of “hopeful contradictions” in the underserved communities they work with – tackling issues and challenges from a place of community strength and wealth and challenging the notion of starting from a place of assumed deficit.

This results in leadership from a framework of care and stewardship rather than exploitation and extraction.

An example of this Dayna and Jonathan discuss is the Green New Deal, which aims to tie climate, justice, and prosperity together. This approach envisions climate stewardship as a driver of prosperity, and recognizes the need to center frontline and vulnerable communities in the new paradigm.

What's Possible With Jonathan Lash is an exploration of the work that people are doing all over the world to tackle climate change that Lash and ISC will release every other month, it is produced in partnership with ISC.