Shawn McKenzie
Director
Shawn has long been intrigued by the interrelationships between people and natural, social and built environments. He studied human ecology as an undergraduate and later pursued an MPH, finding that his interests in nutrition, behavior, anthropology and environmental sciences matched well with an interdisciplinary career in public health.
Shawn’s international health experience includes program management in child survival, safe motherhood, and social and behavior change communication. After living and working in Central Asia and Southeast Asia, he joined the Center in 2003 to direct the Food Production & Public Health Program. Today, as Director, he works with colleagues in each of the Center's program areas to navigate the challenges of bridging academic research with education and public health practice. "Maintaining the balance between the scholarship of discovery and the scholarship of application," he says, "is an important aspect of our work." Shawn is a Senior Research Associate on the faculty of the Department of Environmental Health & Engineering at the Bloomberg School of Public Health.