Shawn Dove joined the Open Society Institute in May 2008 as the campaign manager for the new U.S. Programs Campaign for Black Male Achievement. He has more than two decades of leadership experience in youth development, education, and community-building, designing and implementing innovative initiatives.

During his career Dove served as one of the founding directors of New York City's Beacon School movement in the early 1990's while working with the Harlem Children's Zone. As creative communities director for the National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts he led a national initiative that partnered community schools of the arts and public housing communities in 20 U.S. cities.

As New York vice president for Mentor/National Mentoring Partnership he initiated a strategic response to the lack of African American and Latino male mentors for New York City's boys by creating a public awareness and recruitment initiative called The Male Mentoring Project.

In 2006, Dove founded Proud Poppa, a publication for African American fathers and is a co-founder of Harlem Men Stand Up, an empowerment project that holds quarterly summits in Harlem. Dove was a Charles H. Revson Fellow at Columbia University in 1993 and received a BA in English from Wesleyan University.