Sean Hassan

Sean Hassan

Chair, Board of Trustee Place 4

Mr. Sean Hassan was elected on December 13, 2016 in a runoff election for Place 4 on the Austin Community College District Board of Trustees. He was re-elected in November 2022.  His term ends in 2028.  He currently serves as Board Chair.

Sean was motivated to run for the ACC Board given how his own life was transformed when his mother became a Certified Nurses Aide, then a Licensed Vocational Nurse through a publicly-funded, career training program. Obtaining the vocational degree enabled his mom to earn a family-sustaining wage after years of precarious financial circumstances. However, to complete the program she had to overcome a range of challenges from unreliable transportation to the high cost of textbooks.

Relying on Pell Grants, the federal Work Study program, and other financial aid, Sean obtained his Masters degree in the Management of NGOs from the London School of Economics and his JD from Stanford Law School, where he was class valedictorian.

Sean began his professional career teaching American History and U.S. Government at the same Title 1 high school from which he graduated. Later he worked with Muslim community leaders in France, Pakistan, Syria, Tajikistan, and the UAE, among other countries, educating them on the 40 youth developmental assets. He provided training and technical assistance to these leaders on how to develop community-wide strategies under which multiple organizations would coordinate activities to advance youth development, drawing on each organization’s core competencies, reducing duplication of effort and minimizing gaps in services. As part of this work, Sean also designed, organized, and served as the primary trainer for international conferences held in cities from Dubai to Lisbon. Sean later served as Vice-President of a Boys & Girls Clubs chapter that served some 1500 students, primarily Latino and African-American, each day at 8 locations across East Palo Alto, California. Adding more than 100 days of instruction to a 180-day academic year, Sean coordinated closely with partnering school districts and community-based organizations to implement academic and enrichment supports that the school districts did not have the resources to offer.

For the past 8 years, Sean served as Chairperson of the Aga Khan Youth & Sports Board, leading youth development and engagement activities for more than 80 congregations across the country. The Board served 3,000 Muslim youth each summer in nineteen multi-week camps; oversaw 1,200 scouts across several troops including ones that received the highest per capita Eagle Scout recognitions in Texas; and organized nearly 800 service-learning events engaging more than 7,000 Muslim youth volunteers, which earned the organization the Points of Light award.