Shelley Ackerman ’09

Performing at Walt Disney Concert Hall in 2004 was a thrill for all of the students in the Elizabeth Mandell Music Institute’s chamber orchestra. For Shelley, then a seventh-grade flutist in her first year at Crossroads, it was also a turning point. 

Shelley loved science and math, but her hope at the time was to enroll in a music conservatory program after high school. A chance encounter during a rehearsal at the Hall set her on a different path. Shelley noticed an engineer working to improve the acoustics in the recently opened facility. She was fascinated by how slight adjustments he made had a profound impact on the sound. 

Remembering watching the engineer work that day, Shelley recalled,“It was really a marriage of music and STEM that I loved, and it ultimately led me to pursuing an engineering degree.” 

In high school, Shelley interned with an architectural acoustics firm and took every science class the Upper School offered. (“I’m hopeful that there are more and more students coming out of Crossroads who are pursuing careers in STEM,” she notes.) Shelley attended MIT, where she turned her attention to biomedical engineering. She learned how to apply engineering principles to biology and medicine in order to create new therapies for diseases. 

While earning a Ph.D. in bioengineering from Stanford, Shelley joined an immuno-oncology lab. She helped build a new technology for developing tumor-targeting therapies that leverage the power of both the innate and adaptive immune systems. That technology became the basis for the 2015 launch of Bolt Biotherapeutics, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing novel immunotherapies for the treatment of cancer. As a director and program team lead at Bolt, Shelley has been instrumental in leading pioneering work in cancer immunotherapeutics. 

While music and STEM classes were central to Shelley’s Crossroads experience, she believes the writing skills she gained were one of the most important benefits of her education. “Ultimately, you can’t get anywhere without being able to communicate your findings and clearly articulate how they have an impact,” she shared.