Susan Dix Lyons, MA

Susan is a social entrepreneur and former journalist. She is the founder of Clinica Verde, a healthcare design organization started to create a global prototype of a new model of care for families living in poverty in Nicaragua. She served as a Lecturer and Fellow at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University (d.school), where she spent the year immersed in the study and application of design thinking. She also attended the Executive Program in Social Entrepreneurship at Stanford Graduate School of Business. She has a Master’s in Art History with a focus on Architectural History and is especially interested in space and the application of evidence-based design to improve health outcomes. In 2014, Susan was honored as an Unsung Hero of Compassion by the 14th Dalai Lama. She is a sometimes-contributor to the Perspective series of NPR/KQED, a media junkie, middling snowboarder, and a proud small-town Ohio girl who has lived in Bogota, Colombia, D.C., London, Chicago, and San Jose, Costa Rica –but loves no place more than the orbit of her husband and three kids.