We Love A Good Story.

Rafe H Andrews

Lead Creative Producer

Rafe is the Lead Creative Producer at DAWNING. As a founding member of the core DAWNING team, Rafe has taken on diverse leadership responsibilities in all areas and phases of work across multiple projects in Africa, Asia and Latin America since 2017. From initial brainstorming all the way to final delivery, Rafe works closely with our Executive Director and other senior members of the team to co-create and expand the idea of what DAWNING is and can be.

Raised by classical musicians and active public philanthropists, Rafe developed early notions of universal solidarity and free artistic expression that fostered a diverse professional trajectory as a musician, producer, photographer, and writer. This background guides an evolving career at DAWNING which intersects the visual arts, narrative non-fiction, and global affairs.

Nick Parisse

Director of Photography

Nick is our Director of Photography. As a seasoned educator, photographer and editor with over 15 years of experience, Nick oversees every aspect of visual storytelling at DAWNING, from envisioning a project to sequencing a story. A founding member of our core team, Nick has worked in our projects in Asia, Africa and Latin America since 2016.

Nick is an all-terrain professional who adapts his skills to any environment. An extraordinarily sensitive artist and humanitarian, he is a natural leader in and out of the field, and often a mentor to younger team members.

Nick is a graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan, where he’s now a part-time faculty member teaching photography and digital imaging. Nick’s work with DAWNING has been published in some of the world’s leading media in eight languages.

Camille Sachs

Senior Research Specialist

Camille is Senior Research Specialist at DAWNING. Her work is instrumental in getting our team ready for fieldwork by conducting extensive literature reviews, helping in the design of research plans, and making sure our team is complying with ethical and operational standards.  In the field, her main task is related to interview curation and transcriptions –all our textual data goes through her. After fieldwork, she works closely with our Executive Director and other senior colleagues in the organization and final editing of research materials.

Camille is an extraordinarily resourceful and resilient leader. She brings extensive experience with leading international organizations in Africa, South America and Southeast Asia, with a particular expertise on gender issues and human rights across different sectors. She obtained her M.S. in International Economics at the Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC.

Joey Rosa

Creative Director

Joey is the Creative Director at DAWNING. Besides his work as a designer and artist, he has worked as a hands-on leader in our projects since we started –a strategy thinker, experienced mentor and educator, with deep knowledge of what it takes to get a complex project from inception to the finish line.

Joey is one of the most influential thought leaders in the branding industry. Before becoming a serial entrepreneur, Joey spent over 10 years shaping some of the world’s largest consumer-facing products. His affinity for giving back and working with purpose-driven companies inspired him to start Matterful Brands –a unique branding agency specialized in socially responsible products and organizations.

Eric Andriantsialonina

Graphic Storytelling Director

Eric, also known as Dwa, is our Graphic Storytelling Director. A renowned artist, designer and author of several award-winning graphic novels, Eric’s role at DAWNING is to lead the incorporation of new narrative tools and techniques to our research and storytelling process. Eric does not only work with us from his studio in his native Madagascar. Whenever possible, he joins our research fieldwork team anywhere in the world.

Eric is one of the most salient artists in a new generation of graphic storytellers emerging in the African continent. A self-taught artist, who makes his own sketchbooks by hand, Eric brings to DAWNING an extraordinary sensitivity to the complex issues we cover. His role is critical in helping us open up to the limitless possibilities of narrative imagination in social science research.

Francisco Vellarino

Applied and Fine Arts Lead

Francisco Vellarino is a painter, sculptor and architect from Oliva de la Frontera, a small village in Southwestern Spain, where he has his studio. A mentee of Antonio Lopez, one of the most important artists in Spain’s recent history, Francisco started collaborating with DAWNING in 2018: he crafted the portraits of every member of our core team for this section of the DAWNING website. After collaborating on our projects in Spain and Mongolia, we asked Francisco to draw his self-portrait as he took on a very special role at DAWNING: Applied and Fine Arts Lead.

In this new role, Francisco coordinates our efforts to investigate and experiment with new techniques from different branches of the arts. As an award-winning artist, he also curates our relationships with the art world. Francisco’s work is in the permanent collection of museums in Spain and in private collections all over the world.