2024 Honoree

Shalanda Young received her Master of Health Administration degree from Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in 2001, with a major in health systems management. Before coming to Tulane, she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology from Loyola University.

After graduating from Tulane, Young moved to Washington DC, where she began work with the National Institutes of Health as a presidential management fellow. She went on to work for over a decade as a staff member for the United States House Committee on Appropriations and was named staff director of the committee in 2017. In this role she was involved in responding to the 2018-2019 U.S. federal government shutdown and the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

A noted American political advisor, with demonstrated skill in the area of budget negotiation, she is the current director of the Office of Management and Budget. She is widely recognized for her unique capacity for negotiating across seemingly intractable party boundaries, and is credited as playing an essential role in establishing a deal between President Biden and then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy to raise the debt ceiling.