Shah Powell Scott Board Member of The Ability Challenge

Shah Powell Scott

Board Member

Leading with a staunch commitment to moving equity forward by building bridges and breaking down silos, Shah has navigated a long career dedicated to amplifying the voices of historically marginalized communities. As the NYC Department of Education's Director of Family Support within the Office of Special Education since 2019, Shah has supported more than 200,000 students with disabilities and their families navigate escalated special education concerns to resolution. She strategically utilizes these interactions to identify current and historical trends to develop/revise policy, develop customized citywide workshops, and actively engage stakeholders including but not limited to community advocates and elected officials. Shah has led educational initiatives supporting students and their families since her start in 2011 as a court liaison working with court involved students, balancing law and policy as a special education Impartial Hearing representative, and closely analyzing and revising policies after ultimately joining the central Special Education Office's policy team as Associate Director of Special Projects in 2018. 

Prior to Shah's career in education, she spent six years in specialized human services work as a community advocate and case manager. This included hospital based management of medical and housing initiatives for adult and youth patients living with HIV/AIDS, and then moving on to coordinate safe community based daily living services in a specialized emergency residential setting for LGBTQ youth experiencing homelessness. This work fueled her passion for advocacy and a desire to start closely examining how to dismantle the systemic inequities that stifled community growth. 

Shah holds a Master’s degree in Education Policy and Management from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and an advanced certificate in Child Protection from the Harvard François Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights. As a member of their Equity and Inclusion Fellows, Shah worked on advancing Diversity Initiatives on the Harvard campus to serve as a bridge with student councils, student organizations and fellow classmates to work towards a more equitable and inclusive campus. She maintains membership National Dropout Prevention Network and The National Association for Family, School, and Community Engagement. Shah's areas of interest and content expertise are best practices in family engagement, diversity/equity/inclusion/belonging/justice, advocacy, special education, education policy analysis, juvenile justice, and youth risk/resilience factors.