Hi, I'm Dawn Davidson and I launched Kindling Innovative Capacity in 2018 to help colleges increase their collaborative research and innovation capacity.
Why? I've seen first hand the impact college research capacity has on students, the college and industry and community partners.
Colleges are vital innovation agents in their communities and beyond. By partnering with industry and community organizations in research and innovation they enhance their partners’ competitiveness, efficacy and sustainability, while providing students with valuable innovation experience and skills.
Kindling Innovative Capacity helps colleges across Canada realize this potential.
Whether your college is just getting started or has established capacity, we can help you make a greater impact. At Kindling we act as a trusted member of your team fitting in where you need us most.
Dawn is a research and innovation leader with over fifteen years of experience. Through Kindling, she has assisted numerous colleges develop capacity via strategic advice, funding strategy and awards, partnership development and training.
Prior to launching Kindling in 2018, Dawn was the Associate Vice President, Research and Innovation at the George Brown College, where she led the college's research, innovation and entrepreneurship strategy. She also oversaw institutional research and planning, focusing on educational quality measurement and improvement, and strategy implementation in this role. Dawn and her team grew the college to one of the largest and most successful college research enterprises in Canada—they positively impacted thousands of industry and community organizations and over 10 thousand students. Under her stewardship, the College was recognized in the top 3 research colleges in the country from 2015 to 2018 (RE$EARCH Infosource). Dawn championed the expansion of George Brown’s activities into new arenas, including entrepreneurship with the creation of startGBC and the Mass Timber Institute co-led with the University of Toronto, and expanded capacity in College’s research exchanges including the Social Innovation, Product Development, Digital Design and Fashion Exchanges and the College’s Technology Access Centre, the Food Innovation and Research Studio.
Dawn serves on NSERC's College and Community Innovation review committees for programs such as Mobilize, Technology Access Centre, COVID-19 Rapid Response and Applied Research Tools and Instruments and previously served on Colleges Ontario’s Heads of Applied Research Executive Committee (2015-2017, Chair 2018), Colleges and Institutes Canada’s National Research Council (2016-2018) and the Tech-Access Canada Advisory Committee (2016-2018).
Dawn has a Masters and an Honors Bachelor of Science from the University of Toronto, where she studied and conducted research in ecology, biogeography and environmental change. Her thesis topic was environmental and ecological change in the mangrove environments of the Sabana-Camagüey archipelago and Ciego de Ávila, Cuba. During her undergraduate she spent summers in the Canadian arctic conducting research on the Hudson Bay Lowlands Project: Ecosystem Studies and Conservation of Coastal Arctic Tundra.
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