Toban is a designer, educator, and researcher with a background in interior architecture and strategic design.

Currently, she is a Strategic Design Lead at Rhode Island School of Design’s Center for Complexity (CfC), a project-based studio applying creative practices to complex and systemic challenges. She leads the Opioids, Care, and Addiction work, a multi-year effort in collaboration with various stakeholders including public health researchers, people who use drugs, government officials, and community organizations to design healing and compassionate systems of care.

In 2019, she co-founded mainstay, RI – a think tank and advocacy group working to redesign the environments of care for people impacted by the overdose crisis.

Toban works with numerous public sector and government organizations. She has worked with the Rhode Island Office of Innovation to develop and facilitate an educational program for state employees to work across departments on shared challenges. She helped lead Rhode Island’s Future Libraries initiative funded by the Knight Foundation to reimagine and redesign libraries for the 21st Century. In 2020, she supported efforts with the United Nations Development Program and the UN VietNam office in developing strategies for the country's shift towards a Circular Economy.

As an educator, Toban has taught at the Rhode Island School of Design and the University of Michigan. She has lectured and is a guest critic at academic institutions including the Royal College of Art in London and the Istituto Europeo di Design in Barcelona.

Previously, Toban worked as an architectural designer specializing in adaptive reuse projects for residential, commercial and civic spaces. She holds a Master of Design in Interior Architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design, and a Bachelor of Science in Human Ecology from the University of Alberta.

Originally from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
Now based in Barcelona, Spain. 

︎ tobanshadlyn@gmail.com