Shaw Natsui

Shaw Natsui is from South Florida and graduated from Harvard College where he became actively involved in community-based youth work and organizing in Boston through the Phillips Brooks House Association (PBHA), a student-led nonprofit working in partnership with local communities for social change.  He took a semester leave from school in 2004 to work on voter registration and voter mobilization in communities of color in Boston, as well as to join city-wide efforts to address youth violence and summer employment opportunities for teens.  Shaw served as President of PBHA in 2005 and after graduation, worked briefly for Physicians for Human Rights on their Health and Justice for Youth Campaign, which focused on reforming the juvenile justice system on individual state levels.  He then worked as the Adolescent Services Coordinator at the Martha Eliot Community Health Center in Jamaica Plain, Boston, to develop and run multiple programs with emphasis on peer leadership, youth development and youth-led organizing, violence prevention, obesity and diabetes prevention, and mental health intervention. 

With the support of the Benjamin A. Trustman Fellowship from Harvard, Shaw spent 1.5 years living in Lima, Peru and working on various projects related to youth and health (HIV/TB).  He will complete a concurrent MD from the University of Michigan Medical School and Masters in Public Policy (MPP) at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.  In medical school, he participated in qualitative research on HIV prevention in the tourism sector of the Dominican Republic.  He is now studying Social and Urban Policy at HKS where he is a Taubman Center for State and Local Government MPP Fellow.  Shaw hopes to further develop his interests through a residency training in Emergency Medicine.