Dabney Hailey, Founder + Principal of Hailey Group, began her career as an art museum curator with a focus on modern and contemporary art. 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. 

Dabney spent more than a decade as a curator. She was the Linda Wyatt 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. Dabney and her team became pioneers in the application of arts learning to organizational behavior: they developed Visual Thinking Strategies, a museum education method, into a leadership, communication, and innovation toolkit for businesses, from small companies to Fortune 500s. She has designed workshops for MIT’s Sloan School of Management’s Executive Education programs, the Center for Collaborative Creativity (the Hive) at Pomona College, and Stanford’s d.school.

Dabney also works in higher education and healthcare, offering leadership trainings for faculty at the University of Pennsylvania and serving as co-director of the Harvard Medical School course, Training the Eye: Improving the Art of Physical Diagnosis. She speaks and publishes regularly on VTS, art, and workplace dynamics. She holds a B.A. from Hendrix College and an M.A. from Northwestern University.