Founder & Executive Director
danielle@photographerswithoutborders.org
Danielle (Dani) Khan Da Silva is the Founder and Executive Director of PWB. She is an internationally-acclaimed and award-winning South Asian/Portuguese photographer/filmmaker, as well as a land protector, scholar and activist. She is also Co-Founder of the Sumatran Wildlife Sanctuary.
Danielle is most passionate about using storytelling to connect people to the earth and to each other, believing that the challenges we face are intersectional and that we can not address one problem without addressing a myriad others. She has earned a Honours Bachelor of Science Degree in Conservation Biology, Psychology and Global Studies from the University of Western Ontario, as well as an MSc. in Environment and Development from the London School of Economics.
Dani Da Silva - Founder & Executive Director
As a photographer Danielle has had images published by National Geographic, the United Nations, The Economist, and the book Cities, Slums and Gender in the Global South: Towards a Feminised Urban Future (Chant & McIlwaine, 2016), among others. As a filmmaker Danielle has created several documentaries, short films (including a short for the Whitley Awards narrated by David Attenborough) and is the creator and director of the PWB TV web series, which has earned awards at film festivals internationally. As a scholar Danielle has published research in the book Climate Governance in the Developing World (Held, Roger & Nag, 2013) and completed a distinguished Master's dissertation exploring the psychology of climate change messaging.
“Storytelling helps us visualise and imagine new possibilities. That way we can manifest new realities.”
Danielle has worked with hundreds of NGOs and several multilateral organizations travelled to over 80 countries, and learned more than 6 languages including English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, some Swahili and Indonesian (she can also read and write in Arabic and is practicing her USL). She is the recipient of the Canadian Top 30 Under 30 Sustainability Leaders Award, and was listed as number 2 in Matador Network's Top 17 Female Photographers of 2017 as well as their Top 5 Women Changing Media. She has been nominated for the 2018 Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Award; she has also been nominated for Canada's Top 100 Powerful Women 2016, 2016 RBC Canadian Women Entrepreneur Awards, and the 2015 Women in Biz Social Good Award. One of her first major lectures was a TEDx talk called "Grassroots Narrative," and she has since gone on to do a second TEDx talk called "Connection is the Key to Conservation." She was a founding member and Co-Chair of the Dandelion Initiative, a non-profit dedicated to creating consent culture and ending violence against women. She is a lecturer at Fleming College for the Environmental Visual Communications program's Multimedia Narratives module taught at the Royal Ontario Museum. Danielle is warm, approachable, and leads from the heart, making her a captivating educator and speaker.
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