Shahanna McKinney-Baldon

Shahanna McKinney-Baldon

Shahanna McKinney-Baldon, M.Ed is the Founding Executive Director at Edot Midwest Regional Jewish Diversity and Racial Justice Collaborative. She also holds several appointments at University of Wisconsin-Madison Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER), including Special Assistant for Diversity and Inclusion; Evaluation Implementation Specialist at Wisconsin Evaluation Collaborative (WEC); WCER Clinical Program mentor; and trainer/curriculum writer with fairplaygame.org, a video game-based simulation that teaches about racism in graduate-level STEMM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, Medicine) education. Shahanna also serves as Co-Director for Tiyuv, an evaluation group focused on Jews of Color-led, culturally-responsive evaluation of community racial justice initiatives. A longtime national thought leader on racial and ethnic diversity in the Jewish community, Shahanna has held leadership roles in Jewish organizations and in public education. She has also led local, regional, and national work on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), including directing professional learning for the Minority Student Achievement Network, a national consortium of public school districts working to end racial achievement and opportunity gaps. Shahanna holds a B.S. in Secondary Education, with concentrations in Hebrew and Communications, from University of Wisconsin-Madison and an M.Ed. in Student Services, with a concentration in Social Justice Education, from University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Among her current volunteer activities, Shahanna sits on the Board of Governors for Reconstructing Judaism, the primary organization of the Reconstructionist denomination of Judaism. Shahanna comes from a large Midwest US African American and Ashkenazi family with Seminole, Cherokee, Blackfoot, and Sephardi roots. She lives in Wisconsin with her family.