Shelley Henson
Expertise
Human centered design, community driven program design, learning strategy and curriculum development, evaluation and research design, systems mapping and theory of change, stakeholder engagement and facilitation, program co-design, public and non-profit capacity building, cross-sector partnerships, and strategic planning.
Content Knowledge
Refugee resettlement, financial inclusion, youth employment and workforce development, poverty reduction strategies, community health and women’s health, expressive arts for wellbeing, open access and digital learning, rural and Indigenous community engagement, humanitarian response programming, trauma-informed practice, and disability inclusion and accessibility.
Bio
Shelley Henson helps social impact organizations achieve sustainable results through human centered design, learning strategy, and impact evaluation. Her work centers on community driven program design and evidence based learning. Her approach is grounded in listening, partnership, and shared decision making. She founded the Center for Design Kindness and brings global private and public sector experience. In senior leadership roles at Visa and American Express, she advanced financial inclusion for marginalized groups, embedded human centered design in leadership training, and shaped learning strategy for more inclusive workplaces.
She specializes in co-designing programs that ensure communities participate fully in decisions about the programs intended for them. Her consulting and humanitarian work includes contributions to the Perpetual Education Fund, refugee resettlement with the International Rescue Committee, and audience listening research with the Navajo Nation. As a Design Research Scientist at Utah State University, she partnered with MIT’s OpenCourseWare initiative to expand open access learning and connect learners to materials from more than one hundred universities. This work strengthened community trust, supported sustainable agriculture, and improved pathways for business development and technology growth.
Shelley holds master’s degrees from Harvard University in Global Development Practice and from Weber State University in Education, where she served as adjunct faculty in leadership development. She has held leadership and advisory roles with Know Your Lemons, Harvard ManageMentor, and the International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning. Shelley is also a working artist and sculptor whose creative practice informs her approach to collaboration and design. As an advocate for disability rights, her lived experience and the support of her service dog, Tucker, guide her commitment to accessibility in practice and in leadership.