Full Name
Shawn McGruder
Job Title
Sr. Associate General Counsel / Principal Equal Employment Opportunity Officer
Company
Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
Speaker Bio
Effective May 20, 2019, Ms. Shawn S. McGruder joined The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) and began managing APL’s EEO and Accommodations portfolios within the Central Laboratory’s Legal and Commercialization Branch. With a growth in auxiliary officers, she subsequently became the Principal EEO and Accommodations Officer and Section Supervisor of the EEO and Accommodations Section, effective August 2022.
For over 30 years, Shawn has applied her finance and legal background to analyze and mitigate business and litigation risks. She is a transformational enterprise leader in governance, investigations, and risk management, with 15+ years of supervisory experience in highly regulated federal, university-affiliated research environments, including seven years in the federal Senior Executive Service (SES). She has offered strategic business advice for senior executives in large, geographically dispersed organizations, where she has advised on strategy, risk management, legal compliance, human resources, and government affairs across industries: service, agriculture, and aerospace & defense.
At APL, her major accomplishments include establishing a robust case operating system and templates for EEO and accommodations processes, revising related policies for clarity and legal sufficiency, securing a psychiatric consultant on mental health accommodations, and establishing and presiding over the adjudication for a surge of hundreds of COVID vaccination exemptions. Recently, she has been working cross-functionally on an automated case processing system with AI features and on updating Work for Industry guidance, balancing commercialization with organizational risk.
Before joining APL, Shawn served as the SES Executive Director of the Center for Civil Rights Enforcement for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), providing executive leadership to 75 federal and contract staff in the intake, investigation, and adjudication of EEO complaints from USDA employees and Civil Rights complaints from the public while effecting a centralized reorganization for ~500 enterprise compliance staff. In October 2012, USDA appointed her to the SES as the Assistant General Counsel for General Law and Research, managing multi-disciplinary general law and litigation matters (appellate, procurement/contracts, FOIA/privacy, intellectual property, torts, research misconduct, scientific integrity, and congressional inquiries) as program counsel for the Research Mission Area and across ~20 USDA sub-agencies and staff offices.
Shawn came to USDA from the Social Security Administration (SSA), where she started her career as a legal intern and proceeded through progressively responsible roles. During her tenure at SSA, Shawn held litigating and supervisory attorney positions in SSA Headquarters and Philadelphia Region—winning precedential/landmark cases overturning established precedent, and last serving as Director of the Personnel Law Division. She litigated and managed landmark and complex litigation, including nationwide employment class actions, and provided national oversight for civil rights matters.
She also served rotational assignments as the Deputy Associate Commissioner for Labor-Management and Employee Relations, Senior Advisor to the Acting Associate Commissioner for Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity, and Special Assistant U.S. Attorney in two jurisdictions.
Shawn graduated with a B.B.A. in Finance and a J.D. from Howard University, where she graduated cum laude and served on the editorial board of the Howard Law Journal. She also holds an Executive Certificate in Public Policy from the Harvard University Kennedy School and certificates in investigation, mediation, and corporate board readiness. A native of Columbia, Maryland, Shawn has been admitted to practice law in Maryland, Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, and before the U.S. Supreme Court. As Regional Director for Region IV of the National Bar Association (NBA), she represented members from the 4th federal judicial circuit (MD, VA, WV, NC & SC) on NBA's Board of Governors. She is the 2026 President of the Board for the Association of Corporate Counsel (Baltimore) and a frequently requested presenter at national training conferences.
For over 30 years, Shawn has applied her finance and legal background to analyze and mitigate business and litigation risks. She is a transformational enterprise leader in governance, investigations, and risk management, with 15+ years of supervisory experience in highly regulated federal, university-affiliated research environments, including seven years in the federal Senior Executive Service (SES). She has offered strategic business advice for senior executives in large, geographically dispersed organizations, where she has advised on strategy, risk management, legal compliance, human resources, and government affairs across industries: service, agriculture, and aerospace & defense.
At APL, her major accomplishments include establishing a robust case operating system and templates for EEO and accommodations processes, revising related policies for clarity and legal sufficiency, securing a psychiatric consultant on mental health accommodations, and establishing and presiding over the adjudication for a surge of hundreds of COVID vaccination exemptions. Recently, she has been working cross-functionally on an automated case processing system with AI features and on updating Work for Industry guidance, balancing commercialization with organizational risk.
Before joining APL, Shawn served as the SES Executive Director of the Center for Civil Rights Enforcement for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), providing executive leadership to 75 federal and contract staff in the intake, investigation, and adjudication of EEO complaints from USDA employees and Civil Rights complaints from the public while effecting a centralized reorganization for ~500 enterprise compliance staff. In October 2012, USDA appointed her to the SES as the Assistant General Counsel for General Law and Research, managing multi-disciplinary general law and litigation matters (appellate, procurement/contracts, FOIA/privacy, intellectual property, torts, research misconduct, scientific integrity, and congressional inquiries) as program counsel for the Research Mission Area and across ~20 USDA sub-agencies and staff offices.
Shawn came to USDA from the Social Security Administration (SSA), where she started her career as a legal intern and proceeded through progressively responsible roles. During her tenure at SSA, Shawn held litigating and supervisory attorney positions in SSA Headquarters and Philadelphia Region—winning precedential/landmark cases overturning established precedent, and last serving as Director of the Personnel Law Division. She litigated and managed landmark and complex litigation, including nationwide employment class actions, and provided national oversight for civil rights matters.
She also served rotational assignments as the Deputy Associate Commissioner for Labor-Management and Employee Relations, Senior Advisor to the Acting Associate Commissioner for Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity, and Special Assistant U.S. Attorney in two jurisdictions.
Shawn graduated with a B.B.A. in Finance and a J.D. from Howard University, where she graduated cum laude and served on the editorial board of the Howard Law Journal. She also holds an Executive Certificate in Public Policy from the Harvard University Kennedy School and certificates in investigation, mediation, and corporate board readiness. A native of Columbia, Maryland, Shawn has been admitted to practice law in Maryland, Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, and before the U.S. Supreme Court. As Regional Director for Region IV of the National Bar Association (NBA), she represented members from the 4th federal judicial circuit (MD, VA, WV, NC & SC) on NBA's Board of Governors. She is the 2026 President of the Board for the Association of Corporate Counsel (Baltimore) and a frequently requested presenter at national training conferences.
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