Shawn Mahoney

Dr. Shawn Mahoney is an expert in transformation, leadership, and narrative. She is the coauthor of Narrative Wins!: Learn to Tell the Right Story to the Right Person in the Right Way for the Right Reason at the Right Time. She is an advisor to product and executive teams navigating growth, including AI adoption, integration, and Agentic System Design. Shawn works with founders, executives, and cross-functional teams to strengthen narrative coherence—the shared decision architecture that determines whether strategies scale or fragment.

Shawn is recognized for her unique ability to help individuals, teams, and executives learn and grow while optimizing commercial outcomes and efficacy, particularly during times of transition and change. Her work focuses on helping organizations reduce execution drag, align around meaningful tradeoffs, and integrate new contexts to unlock new ways of operating for growth (including AI capabilities) without amplifying confusion.

Over the course of her career, she has worked with the U.S. armed forces and military, including the Seabees and Marines. Dr. Mahoney is a sought-after executive recruited for first-ever roles in global companies, serving as a highly effective C-suite leader across industries and sectors. Her focus has been on impact while, designing, building, and scaling business in roles such as President, Chief Academic Officer, SVP Product, Chief Learning Officer, Chief Product Officer, Global Strategist, and Chief Customer Officer.

In recognition for her exceptional contributions to business impact, Shawn was awarded the MVP Leader’s Choice Award in Shared Services and Business Operations for the Worldwide Public Sector at Amazon Web Services. She was the recipient of the Intellectual Contribution and Faculty Tribute Award for the Technology, Innovation, and Education cohort at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and was named one of the Faces of Change by Insight Partners.
Dr. Mahoney holds a PhD in Educational Technology from Arizona State University; an MA Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in Technology, Innovation, and Education; an MA in Bilingual Education; and a BA in Secondary Education. Shawn began her professional journey as a bilingual teacher and believes in the power of lifelong learning and curiosity to be a door opener to greater opportunity.

Shawn also serves on several advisory boards, including currently serving as the board chair for a non-for-profit in media and news and an advisor at General Assembly.