Current Leaders
Erin Kelly, MS2
Nevin Fowler, MS2
Advisors
Faculty Advisor: Peter Mason, MD
Academic Advisor: Shawn O'Leary
Shawn has run RHS since 2008, and has greatly expanded the program since that time.
Shawn has been working to create innovative programs in the social justice field since 1992. He is a tribal member of the Bois Forte Band of Ojibwe in northern Minnesota where his family has harvested wild rice for generations.
Shawn was the Director of the Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Community Engagement (DICE) at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth for twenty-two years. Shawn was responsible for developing, implementing and overseeing The Geisel School of Medicine's diversity programs and executing its mission of promoting a climate of unity and respect. He was the academic advisor to the Urban and Rural Health Scholar Programs. He also served as an advisor to minority students and student affinity groups and worked to ensure the success and retention of all minority students, faculty and staff. Shawn was selected by medical students for induction into the Gold Humanism in Medicine Honor Society for Outstanding Mentorship in 2005, 2018 and 2024. He received the Dartmouth College Holly Fell Sateia MLK Social Justice Award. In 2023 Shawn was awarded the John Lyons Humanism in Medicine Lifetime Achievement Award for his sense of intellectual and humanistic curiosity, kindness, wonder, moral values, as well as promoting service and generosity to the less privileged.
Shawn came to Geisel from the University of Maine where he served as Assistant Director of the Native American Center. Prior to coming to New England, Shawn worked in his home state of Minnesota developing minority recruitment and retention strategies, based on an individualized student service philosophy, at the Center of American Indian and Minority Health, University of Minnesota Duluth School of Medicine. He chaired the Indians into Medicine advisory board and was the liaison between the medical school and the thirty-four reservation communities in Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa. Shawn also worked for the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe's Educational Talent Search Program where he worked to promote the educational needs of first generation American Indian students.
Wherever Shawn lives and works, he is actively engaged in the community. He served as a youth hockey coach and has coached over forty hockey teams in Minnesota, Maine, New Hampshire and Canada. While in Minnesota, he was appointed by Minnesota Governor Arne Carlson to the Juvenile Justice Advisory Committee for his work with high school and college dropouts in the correctional system.
Shawn is married, has four sons and lives in Acworth, New Hampshire.