Val Swan

Val Swan supports the growth and development of the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL®)’s social sector work in nonprofit, foundation, and corporate social responsibility arenas. Through the Societal Advancement team at CCL she designs and delivers programs and champions partnerships with youth and community serving organizations nationally.

Val’s experience spans over two decades of diverse work in nonprofit, academic, healthcare, legal, and corporate spheres. Since 2008 at CCL Val has served as a dedicated mentor, program designer, and facilitator of leadership development programs for young people and senior leaders, and has helped lead global marketing and communications efforts across the enterprise.

Val is passionate about developing young people and currently serves as project director and faculty for the Girl Scouts Young Women’s Leadership Institute and the Orange County Leadership Academy. She also contributes directly to the improvement of health and healthcare for all Americans for eight years as senior program manager for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Executive Nurse Fellows, a three year, world-class prestigious national leadership development experience to enhance the effectiveness of nurse leaders to impact the US healthcare system.

She has helped build several initiatives from the ground up, including an emergent five-year large-scale professional development initiative for Virginia Tech with New Horizons Computer Learning Center. Val has proven a deep commitment to fostering quality of life improvements across the socioeconomic spectrum, specifically in community-based, youth leadership and health sectors. Val has a natural enthusiasm for communications and building relationships, and excels connecting people and ideas and empowering individuals to be their best selves. She is a gifted writer and storyteller.

She has worked with a wide variety of young adults, including special needs, low income and at-risk populations as a peer educator designing a HIV/AIDS curriculum for middle schoolers, program development at the YMCA, summer camp counselor and instructor at South Shore YMCA in Cape Cod, MA, CCFA Camp Oasis in St. Louis, MO for children with chronic digestive illnesses, and Victory Junction Gang Camp in Randleman, NC, also with chronically ill children. Val has championed the work with the CCL/YMCA Black & Latino Achievers leadership and mentoring program for eight years since 2009. She has facilitated the Rotary Youth Leadership initiative with CCL, a leadership development program for rising high school juniors and seniors, and focus groups with the Golden Leaf Scholars leadership development program for college freshman and sophomores from tobacco-dependent, economically distressed, and/or rural communities in North Carolina.

Val shares her passion for leadership and empowerment as a keynote speaker to various organizations and professional writer, blogger and editor for businesses & individuals. Recent publications include lead authorship on The Importance of Young Women’s Leadership: Our Story With Girl Scouts case study published in December of 2015. She graduated magna cum laude from the University of Arizona with a B.A. in Sociology. Val recently relocated to the Bay Area of California in October of 2016.