Shawn Dove is the Chief Executive Officer of the Campaign for Black Male Achievement (CBMA), a national membership organization committed to improving the life outcomes for Black men and boys. Under Dove’s leadership, CBMA has leveraged more than $212 million in national and local funds for Black Male Achievement, and has grown to include nearly 6,000 individual and 3,000 organizational members across the U.S.
Since 2008, Dove’s stellar leadership has propelled CBMA from being an initiative of the Open Society Foundations (OSF) into an independent entity that has established an emerging field of Black Male Achievement. Among Dove’s key accomplishments are helping seed the launch of President Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper Initiative; brokering a partnership between OSF, Bloomberg Philanthropies and the City of New York to launch the Young Men’s Initiative; and serving as a lead organizer of the Executives’ Alliance to Expand Opportunities for Boys & Young Men of Color.
Prior to CBMA, Dove held more than two decades’ experience as a youth development professional, community-builder and advocate for children and families. For 10 years, Dove served as Program Director of the Harlem Children Zone-operated Countee Cullen Community Center, where he helped spearhead the launch of HCZ’s Fitness & Nutrition Center. His additional leadership roles include Executive Director of The DOME Project; Director of Youth Ministries for First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens in Somerset, NJ; Creative Communities Director for the National Guild for Community Schools of the Arts; and New York Vice President of MENTOR/National Mentoring Partnership.
As evidenced by CBMA’s commitment to narrative change, Dove has continuously created platforms to amplify voices and stories by marginalized people and communities. While at HCZ, he became the founding Editor-In-Chief of Harlem Overheard, an award-winning youth-produced newspaper.
For his catalytic leadership, Dove has been recognized with numerous awards. In 2018 he was awarded the key to the City of Louisville by Mayor Greg Fischer, and was named Black Enterprise’s 2017 “BE Modern Man of the Year.” Dove is also a recipient of the Charles H. Revson Fellowship at Columbia University, and was named one of Ebony Magazine’s Power 100 in 2016.
Dove earned a BA in English from Wesleyan University and is a graduate of Columbia University Business School’s Institute for Not-for-Profit Management. He currently lives in New Jersey with his wonderful wife and four amazing children.
