Shawna Young
Chief Executive Officer, Camelback Ventures
Interim CEO, Ada Developers Academy
Shawna Young is a passionate educator, social impact entrepreneur, educator and speaker who has dedicated her career to empowering individuals and driving social change. Currently she is the Chief Executive Officer at Cambelback Ventures as well as the Interim CEO of Ada Developers Academy, a nonprofit that has trained over 1,000 women and gender expansive people of color as software developers, since 2013. Prior to Ada, Shawna served as the executive director of the Scratch Foundation, Duke Talent Identification Program (Duke TIP), and MIT Introduction to Engineering and Science. She began her career as a science educator in North Carolina and also managed diversity programs at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.
At Duke TIP, she directed one of the largest academic talent searches, with over 450,000 K-12 students and over 3 million alumni. During COVID-19, Young transitioned the $35M+ non-profit organization, anchored in providing academically rigorous summer residential programs, to primarily serving its students and families online and developing new outreach methods to increase the diversity of students in its talent search. Prior to Duke TIP, Young spearheaded the expansion the Office of Engineering Outreach Programs (OEOP) at MIT, serving as the executive director for eight years.