Lee Shull is a consultant with Icarus Consulting. Lee completed is a certified diversity
and inclusion practitioner and received his certification from Cornell University. He is
also a graduate of the prestigious leadership seminar: White Men’s Caucus on
Eliminating Racism, Sexism, and Homophobia in Organizations. Lee has also
completed The Pauli Murray Center’s Work of Racial Justice Workshop.
Over the last 30 years, Lee has built a successful career as a senior IT consultant
focusing on business process improvement/re-engineering. Over that period, he
worked with Dell Services and Venetia Partners and specialized in enterprise resource
planning (ERP) system implementations. As a team or project lead, Lee has led over
twenty projects and worked with IBM Global Financing, Nortel Networks, Pennzoil
Quaker State, and Beiersdorf Inc., among others.
While this career has helped him to build excellent program management skills and
support his family, his passion lies in activism, particularly violence prevention. Lee’s leap towards
advocacy began with the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre that started in his
neighborhood and took the daughter of a close friend. He took a two-month pause from the demands
of his consulting career. He co-founded Sandy Hook Promise (SHP), the first national non-profit
organization from a violent mass casualty event. Lee lobbied CT state lawmakers to pass the strictest
firearm safety legislation in the country (CT Bill 1160, AN ACT CONCERNING GUN VIOLENCE
PREVENTION AND CHILDREN’S SAFETY, signed April 4, 2013). Lee has also participated in Newtown
Action Alliance’s efforts in lobbying Congress with survivors of gun violence as part of their annual
national vigil.
As part of his continued passion for violence prevention advocacy, Lee began work with The Avielle
Foundation, created in response to the events of Sandy Hook. Based on his motivation for and work with
SHP, Lee developed the Sodina project. Sodina was originally designed to raise awareness of violence’s
scope, scale, and proximity. The national platform, launched in June 2015, showcases interviews, videos,
submitted personal stories of survivors who have lost loved ones and friends to violence, and blog articles.
Lee worked on organizing a strategy summit comprising multi-sector, national public health experts
interested in collaborating on the root cause of violence. Lee’s most recent work proposes a national
campaign for equity and diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging strategist and consultant with D&I
Strategists. Lee has earned a national reputation for his passion for advocacy, collaboration, systems
improvement, and program management skills to address systemic inequity and help improve public
health. He has published numerous articles and has appeared in dozens of podcasts, including:
- The Great Darkness episode
- The Avielle Foundation’s Brainstorm Experience
- Jeremy Richman’s Public Ceremony of Life
- National Launch (YouTube)
- SHP Innovation Initiative launch
- Katie Couric Special: Voices from Newtown
- Southeast Louisiana Annual Justice Speaker Series
- CNN: Piers Morgan, Alison Kosik