Shane Johnson brings an unusual mix of experience to the Community Foundation’s board — physician by training, biotech entrepreneur, and longtime nonprofit board member. He hopes to put all of it toward one goal: helping Western Nevada County build a lasting culture of giving.
Meet Shane
Shane moved to Nevada City with his family at age two and spent his childhood on 140 acres in Peaceful Valley before heading east for high school and college. He earned a B.A. in Studio Art and a B.S. in Neuroscience from Brown University, was a Fulbright Fellow in Colombia, and went on to earn his M.D. from Stanford. His career took an unexpected turn after medical school, when a former professor asked for his help rewriting a business plan — the beginning of a path into biotech entrepreneurship. In 2016 he co-founded BayMedica to scale manufacturing of pharmaceutical-grade cannabinoids. After InMed Pharmaceuticals acquired the company, he stayed on for several years as InMed’s Senior Vice President and General Manager of BayMedica.
Four years ago, after more than three decades away, Shane moved back to Nevada City with his wife and two kids, now ages 7 and 10, to be closer to his late mother, who was living with Alzheimer’s. When he’s not working, you’ll likely find him exploring the Sierra or out on the pickleball court.
Shane has served on nonprofit and corporate boards for many years, including nine years on the board of the Incline Village Community Hospital Foundation.
Shane’s Vision for the Foundation
Shane sees Western Nevada County’s nonprofit landscape as full of promise, but stretched thin. He points to local school parent-teacher clubs as one example — organizations doing important work on limited resources, often carried by a small group of volunteers and donors. He believes the Community Foundation can help change that.
“In Incline Village, where I lived before moving back, giving felt more woven into the life of the community, and I’d love to see that here,” he said. “I’d like to see donors with capacity give more broadly across Western Nevada County, and those with less capacity still give what they can, whether time or money. I want to build awareness of, and interest in, giving that lasts — a perpetual giving philosophy the Foundation can support through endowments, with donor-advised funds as a flexible place to start.”
Building the Foundation First
Shane is candid about where the Community Foundation stands today. He believes the Foundation can help nonprofits grow and serve as a hub for disaster relief — a central, trusted place that makes it easy for donors to support the causes and organizations they care about in Western Nevada County. But he’s equally clear that the Foundation isn’t there yet. Before it can do that work at scale, it needs time — and funding — to build a stable operating base of its own.
“In an ideal world, the Foundation would have an endowment of at least $5 million supporting its operating budget, and securing its permanence,” said Shane. “I’d like to see us get past the formative stage to the point where people say, ‘This is here, and it’s going to be here as far ahead as anyone can see. Now what can we do with this platform?'”
It’s a long-term vision built on patience and permanence, and Shane’s experience helping organizations move from startup to stability makes him well suited to help get the Community Foundation there.