Shawn Heller is former National Director and Co-Founder of Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP), the largest student organization of its kind with chapters on over 200 college and high school campuses.  Heller was instrumental in SSDP’s remarkable growth over the past four years.   He coordinated all the SSDP chapters and managed the SSDP national office in Washington, DC, where he fundraised, coordinated outreach efforts, wrote action alerts, and oversaw website development. 

Before forming SSDP, Heller worked in the White House Office of Political Affairs, where he served as assistant to Linda Moore, Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Director for Political Affairs.  In this capacity Heller wrote weekly political briefs on over 30 states for the President and his advisors, complied the entire weekly political brief, and wrote trip briefs on more than 15 states.  Before working at the White House he briefly volunteered at the Democratic National Committee, White House Advance Team, and was an intern in Senator Bob Graham’s Miami office.  During Heller’s experience with government he asked tough questions about the War on Drugs and the adverse impact it has on people.  He got very few answers.

Heller then knew he had to research this issue on his own and when he did, the answers he found were more troubling than he imagined.  Educated and enlightened to the real consequences of the War on Drugs he began an internship at the Drug Reform Coordination Network in 1998.  Shortly after the beginning of this internship Heller founded the second chapter of SSDP at The George Washington University.

Heller is a graduate of The George Washington University (B.A. Political Science and a minor in Criminal Justice, 2000).  He ran his own computer consulting, repair, and networking company for four years, taught computers at a summer camp, and volunteered at the Sunrise Community for developmentally disabled adults for several years in Miami, FL.

Heller has been published in the Miami Herald, Penthouse.com, and The George Washington University Hatchet, quoted in hundreds of national and collegiate publications on issues concerning drug policy and student and youth issues, which include among others, Rolling Stone Magazine, The New York Times, USA Today, Associated Press, Chicago Tribune, and Salon.com. He has also appeared on CNN and Fox News.

Heller is a member of the board of directors of DanceSafe and the Flex Your Rights Foundations.  He has provided testimony on drugs and discrimination for the American Bar Association, and is the 2002 High Times "Freedom Fighter of the Year."

Shawn Heller may be contacted by phone at 305-323-6430 or by email at shawn@shawnheller.com.  For more information about Students for Sensible Drug Policy please visit www.SSDP.org .

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