Dabney Hailey, Founder + Principal of Hailey Group, began her career as an art museum curator. She was the Gruber '66 Curator at Wellesley College’s Davis Museum and Director of Academic Programs at Brandeis University’s Rose Art Museum. These contexts enabled her to bring her art expertise to robust learning and core ideas in a broad range of disciplines, from anthropology to the hard sciences, and from business to social policy. Intrigued by these successful connections, she took a leap into the business world by founding Hailey Group in 2014, becoming a pioneer in the application of arts learning to organizational behavior. Dabney and her team adapted a core research-based museum method, Visual Thinking Strategies, into a leadership, communication, and innovation toolkit for businesses.

Hailey Group clients include Fortune 500s, global design firms, nonprofits, and start-ups. Hailey has designed workshops for MIT Sloan School of Management’s Executive Education programs, the Center for Collaborative Creativity (the Hive) at the Claremont Colleges, and Stanford’s d.school. Dabney is co-director of the arts-based Harvard Medical School course, Training the Eye: Improving the Art of Physical Diagnosis. She is deeply motivated by the transformative possibilities of art experiences—particularly when we look and think together—to help us improve how we relate to one another and tackle our toughest challenges.