Shawn Swanson, PhD

Shawn Swanson is Executive Director of Atsvara at the Adloris Foundation. He leads innovation education programming, design thinking practice, and operational delivery across the Foundation's innovation portfolio. A design thinking practitioner with seven years of teaching experience at the University of Washington and a background in federal innovation, he co-founded S2 Innovation in partnership with MIT to deliver immersive innovation workshops to organizations across healthcare, government, and enterprise. He previously served as a GS-13 Program Manager at AFWERX, where he created the SparkLab design thinking program and managed the SBIR/STTR evaluation process for over $1B in annual contracts. He has mentored 100+ startups, conducted 400+ customer discovery interviews through two NSF I-Corps fellowships, and secured over $1M in government grants. He holds a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Washington, where he also serves as Affiliate Faculty.