Rosenzweig promoted internally after 10 years of strategic program leadership and notable success
KANSAS CITY, Mo. – (July 5, 2023) – National inclusive youth development organization Camp Fire announced today that Shawna Rosenzweig, Chief Strategy Officer for the past four years, has been promoted to President. To further the innovative work happening at the organization, the President & CEO title has been split into separate positions to better leverage the talent and leadership at headquarters. Greg Zweber will remain CEO.
“Shawna’s strategic leadership within Camp Fire over the past decade has been instrumental to getting the organization to where it is today,” said Zweber. “She has brought our diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts to life over the past four years, driven the charge to address and end cultural appropriation in the organization, helped build the capacity of our national headquarters and staff around the country, and launched and spearheaded key initiatives for the organization, like C.A.M.P.E.R., among other notable accomplishments. Not only is this promotion well-deserved but it gives us the opportunity to further our organization’s distributed leadership model. Shawna is a tremendous asset to the organization and I am excited to see what she will do next in this new role.”
Shawna’s track record of impact extends beyond her time at Camp Fire. From the Middle East to Sesame Street, Shawna has spent two decades working in the Positive Youth Development field. Beginning her career in New York City, she worked in summer camp and afterschool programming at Seeds of Peace and Global Kids Inc. She eventually moved to San Francisco to take on a Program Officer position at Thrive Foundation for Youth, where Camp Fire was in her portfolio of grantees. Recognizing her talent, Camp Fire recruited her to join the organization in June 2013 as the Director of Program Delivery & Evaluation. She began her tenure at Camp Fire leading program quality efforts, improving evaluation processes, and launching a new outcome evaluation tool. Shawna was also tasked with bridging research to practice around how young people thrive, which led to Camp Fire’s research-based framework, called Thrive{ology}.
Shawna’s continued success led to the continual evolution of her role; as Director of Program Effectiveness, she was then tasked with building staff capacity and professional development. She developed a national training program, which led her to design and launch the organization’s first internal learning management system in 2017, called the Learning Lab. Shawna then began to operationalize a larger program strategy, working to scale middle school programming and launching Camp Fire’s new program framework which is now known as the Camp Fire Journey. Shawna was promoted to Chief Strategy Officer in 2019, shifting her focus beyond program innovation and professional development to organization-wide strategy. She led culture change efforts and leadership transitions at the national office and designed and launched DEI efforts across the network, including creating an equity task force to address and end cultural appropriation in the organization. Shawna also spearheaded the design and implementation of Camp Fire’s current strategic plan, helped optimize national leadership conferences, shaped alumni engagement efforts, built strategic national partnerships, and elevated youth voices within the organization. Shawna’s efforts include working with young people to create a complete redesign of Camp Fire’s reward and recognition system of emblems for the first time in the organization’s history. Her thought leadership is sought after in the broader youth development field and has elevated Camp Fire on the national stage.
“Over the past decade, Camp Fire has given me the opportunity to innovate around a solid mission, vision, and value set for supporting young people,” said Rosenzweig. “It’s been exciting to continually adapt the organization’s 113-year legacy to meet the needs of today’s young people. Working collaboratively with such an incredible team and having the space to be creative is what has kept me here. There is a sense of belonging here, which is what we want for the young people we serve. As a member of the LGBTQ2S+ community, I’ve been able to be my full self at Camp Fire. I’ve been fortunate to be supported by an amazing set of mentors who have also continuously challenged me to grow. I’m honored to step into this new role as President and scale our national partnerships. My goal is to make sure Camp Fire is no longer the best-kept secret in Positive Youth Development.”
Shawna proudly serves on the Board of Directors for the National Afterschool Association (NAA), as well as the Journal of Youth Development as the Co-Chair of the Publications Committee, and advises the National Partnership for Student Success. Shawna earned a Master’s Degree in Curriculum & Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She holds a B.A. in Sociology and a minor in Education and Applied Psychology from the University of California Santa Barbara.
She lives in Seattle with her wife, Stef, their two children, Raffi and Crosby, and their two dogs.
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ABOUT CAMP FIRE
Growing up is hard. That’s why Camp Fire connects young people to the outdoors, to others, and to themselves. Founded in 1910, Camp Fire was the first nonsectarian, multiracial organization for girls but today is an inclusive national youth development nonprofit that serves all young people. By creating safe spaces where young people can have fun and be themselves, its 46 affiliates in 24 states provide affirming, year-round, youth-driven experiences—school day programs, afterschool programs, leadership programs, and camps and outdoor education—that enable youth to develop essential skills that have long-term benefits and make a positive social impact on the world.
For more information please contact:
Erin K Risner, Senior Director of Marketing & Communications, Camp Fire National Headquarters, 913.289.4773, erin.risner@campfire.org
