Shane was born in Southern Colorado and raised in the town of Durango and the adjacent town of Bayfield.

Brought up by a single mother who worked to raise three children and put herself through college, Shane and his family moved to the Pacific Northwest as a child where he lived until he moved back to the Southwest to attend college in Santa Fe.

Shane entered the workforce during the days of the dot-com boom in the Pacific Northwest and was fortunate to work for many  amazing companies doing high level wireless data training, project management and consulting. Shane has worked on projects for T-Mobile, McKinsey and Company, Wireless Data Services, Palm, Sonera, MTN, Nokia, Orange Switzerland, Orange UK and Microcell. Shane has worked, traveled and lived around the world in places as varied as Morocco, the United Kingdom, Turkey, Greece, India, the Philippines, Comoros and Quebec.

Realizing his passion lay in the field of research Shane decided to return to academia at New York University, where he graduated as a university honors scholar and was then accepted in a top-10 graduate program in international security at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver.

As an international relations professional Shane is interested in issues of irredentism, external and micro minorities, civil conflict and intervention, the Responsibility to Protect doctrine (R2P), terrorism and the politics of terrorism and Balkan minority rights. Shane has a particular interest in the politics of nationhood and ethnic identity in the Balkans, Greece and Turkey where he has visited and researched as both an undergraduate as well as a graduate student.

When not in school Shane resides in San Francisco, CA.