Shawn Westcott

Special Initiatives and Projects Lead at The Wellbeing Project

Stockholm,

Sweden

Shawn is a father, husband, and global citizen working to create experiences and connections to practices that rewake people’s interconnectedness to our natural world and each other. With more than 20 years of experience in US politics, sustainability, and impact investing, he is a passionate connector, change catalyst and social entrepreneur, having been a first-mover and catalyst in several movements, including US welfare reform, social entrepreneurship, sustainability, and impact investing.

Shawn began his career as a social entrepreneur, helping to launch a national student-led non-profit focused on welfare reform issues in the US. After university, he began his career with Al Gore’s campaign for President, and eventually working as a US political strategist, Chief of Staff & campaign manager over 9 years.

In 2007 Shawn moved to Sweden to study a Masters in sustainability leadership, after which he had a career as a sustainability adviser to governmental sustainability initiatives and corporates. During this time, he also served as Chairman for the Swedish NGO Social Entrepreneurship Forum. In this role he led the development of the first social impact accelerator and incubator in the Nordics, in partnership with the Swedish International Development Agency (Sida). The program worked to support social entrepreneurs in 20 countries in the Global South. For this he was selected as one of the “Top 100 Leaders to Affect Sustainability in Business in Sweden.”

More recently, Shawn spent nearly a decade as a pioneer in the Impact Investing space in Sweden and the Nordics, having initiated and founded the first impact investor network in the Nordics in partnership with Toniic. He later helped lead Nordic operations for two different global impact asset management firms, Triodos Investment Management and BlueOrchard Finance, working within the renewable energy, regenerative agriculture, infrastructure, sustainable food and microfinance sectors.

In 2021-22, Shawn took a nearly two-year sabbatical — a transformative experience wherein he worked to recalibrate his life and career. This included a deep dive into personal development and wellbeing, trauma-informed decision-making, collapse awareness and the further development of a spiritual practices. After this period, Shawn decided to spend the remainder of his career working to inform, inspire and support other people’s awareness of our role in the natural world and deeper sense of connectedness to one another.