Dr. Shawn Landres, Ph.D.

May 6, 2019

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Connecting people, ideas, and resources, Dr. Shawn Landres has earned international recognition for his leadership in social innovation. He is co-founder of Jumpstart Labs, a philanthropic research and design consultancy. Shawn is a past three-term chair of the County of Los Angeles Quality and Productivity Commissioner and a current City of Santa Monica Planning Commissioner, as well as a member of the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Financial Oversight Committee. A Senior Fellow at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and board member of the Santa Monica Bay Area Human Relations Council, he is a former chair of the City of Santa Monica Social Services Commission. Shawn served for six years on the advisory board of Jewish Mosaic: The National Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity, where, as chair, he helped facilitate its merger with Keshet. A Southern California native, where he and his wife Zuzana are now being raised by their two daughters, Shawn holds degrees from Columbia, Oxford, and UC Santa Barbara, where he earned a doctorate in religious studies. He has co-edited four books and published award-winning articles and essays that advance intergroup understanding, and his achievements have earned extensive attention, from the Obama White House, which featured him as a “spotlight innovator,” to media including The Wall Street Journal, TIME, The New York Times, Ha’aretz, Chronicle of Philanthropy, GOOD.is, and FastCo.EXIST. In 2013, the Liberty Hill Foundation honored him with its NextGen Leadership Award. He was a 2015-16 California Connections Fellow of the Southern California Leadership Network, which in 2017 selected him as a 30th anniversary “30-in-30” alumni honoree. Shawn is an advisor to NEXUS and a member of the ROI Community and the Selah Leadership Network.