Cheryl Dahle is an entrepreneur and journalist who works at the intersection of business and social change. Along with a team of designers, scientists, researchers and entrepreneurs, she creates and tests new ways to solve large-scale, systemic problems. She is a Distinguished Adjunct of Professional Practice at The School of Design at Carnegie Mellon University.
Dahle is founder and CEO of Flip Labs, a transition design firm. The company’s first foray into systems work was tackling the global problem of overfishing through its Future of Fish initiative, which Dahle led for ten years. The project became a non-profit innovation hub that supports the collective impact of entrepreneurs whose ideas help end overfishing. Future of Fish was one of two national finalists in the 2012 Buckminster Fuller Challenge, which recognizes insightful systemic approaches to ending the world’s most complex problems.
Prior to founding Future of Fish and Flip Labs, Dahle was a director at Ashoka, where she distilled knowledge from the organization’s network of 2,500 fellows to provide strategic insights to foundations and corporations. Before her work with non-profits, she was part of an incubation and start-up team to launch an online environmental magazine, for which she helped secure $12 million in venture funding.
Dahle spent longer than a decade writing about social entrepreneurship and business for publications including Fast Company, The New York Times and CIO. Dahle also founded and led Fast Company magazine’s Social Capitalist project, an award for top social entrepreneurs.
For her work with Future of Fish, Dahle was named a national “Eco-Innovator” by USA Today in 2013. She is the board chair of Criterion Institute and a board member for Development in Gardening.