Hassana Q. Shaw is an elementary school teacher in East Orange, NJ. She has served as a teacher-mentor to many aspiring educators. Ms. Shaw also assists high school students as they navigate the college entrance process. She is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in Education Leadership at Seton Hall University.

Ameenah serves as the Co-Chair of SciTech2U. She earned her Bachelor of Science Degree in Chemical Engineering from Howard University and her Juris Doctor Degree from Howard University School of Law. Ameenah started her career as a prosecutor in New York and served as a Senior Assistant District Attorney for over 15 years. Ameenah currently works as in-house
counsel for a local construction company in Silver Spring, Maryland. Ameenah has always been active with programs that support the youth as a mentor and most recently has served as a Board Member for the PTA and PTSO for her children’s school.

Shawna Powell, native of Denver, Colorado, has resided in Nashville for 25 years and considers herself an adopted southerner. She was a Pathologist Assistant for 10 years prior to beginning a career in sales. Shawna sold for over 11 years in Molecular Diagnostics and 15 years in Cancer Diagnostics. Currently, she works in the pharmaceutical industry in rare cancer disease. Shawna enjoys home design projects, serving at her church, and spending time with her family and three children: Meciah, Danielle, and Thaddius.

Despite my teaching success, there were still very few members of underrepresented groups majoring in biology, so I thought if more could be done to spur interest in STEM fields earlier in children’s learning life, then possibly more of them might join STEM fields. 

That is when I started offering weekend and summer programs for elementary and middle school students, and the rest, as they say, is history. SciTech2U was born to meet the need for highly qualified STEM majors, especially from underrepresented groups.

Zainab Abbas is the founder and chief executive of SciTech₂U Inc. She received her B.S. from Knoxville College and her M.S. from the University of Cincinnati School of Medicine.  Zainab lends her expertise to SciTech₂U as the CEO, managing day-to-day activities, budgeting, volunteer and instructor recruitment, and program and resource development. She also develops curricula and instructs many SciTech₂U programs.

Kevin D. Bryant currently serves as the Treasurer of SciTech₂U's Board of  Directors and the Director of Programs. As Treasurer,  Kevin overseas all financial reporting aspects of SciTech₂U, and as Directors of Programs, Kevin assists in developing innovating OST and after-,school programs, including funds development to support them.

Ever since I started teaching adults more than a decade ago, I have always had a desire to create learning environments that made it easy for students to learn and to increase the number of students from underrepresented groups (racial and ethnic minorities) entering STEM fields. 

From day one as a biotechnology instructor at a local college, I noticed that there were very few students from underrepresented groups enrolled in my classes. I also had some students who were non-majors and who seemingly had little interest in learning biology.  Over the years, I was able to increase interest in learning biology in my classes among non-majors by exploring and refining ways to make learning easy and interactive, with some non-majors changing their majors to biology.