Shawn Masten was sworn in as the new Communications Specialist for AFSCME Local 88 at the January General Membership meeting.
Shawn has worked at Multnomah County for nearly 5 years and is currently the Health Literacy Communications Specialist for the County Health Department’s Community Health and Student Health centers. She is mixed race (Black and White) and was born abroad in Mexico City to American parents. A Californian for most of her life, Shawn moved to Portland, OR from Berkeley, CA in 2019. She is a professional writer and story-teller who started her adult career as a Bay Area newspaper reporter and editor before turning her attention to nonprofit/public sector communications. Nearly all of her work has been equity-focused including:
- Inspiring teacher/principal/admin-based efforts to narrow the race-based public school education gap
- Ensuring that people of color continue to have easy/free access to California’s Community College system
- Enabling hundreds of low-income and non-English speaking families to engage in Oakland, CA’s public school choice system
- Helping to provide access to free education and training opportunities for union healthcare workers to move up the career ladder and make more money
- Sharing the best practices of front-line union healthcare workers and non-union managers collaborating to improve performance and patient care
