Dr. Sarah Hemminger is a social entrepreneur, scientist, and ice dancer who co-founded Thread, a non-profit that harnesses the power of relationships to support exceptional young people facing extraordinary opportunity and achievement gaps.

Sarah has overseen the development, expansion, and replication of an innovative, paradigm-shifting model that has led to exemplary outcomes for young people and a deeply knitted diverse community of thousands of Baltimoreans. This work fuels her belief that building strong relationships across lines of difference can transform the lives of all involved and weave a more equitable social fabric that improves educational, economic and health outcomes.

Thread’s leadership in building social capital and economic connectedness has been featured by US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, the New York Times, Forbes, and the Chronicle of Philanthropy. Sarah was awarded fellowships from Ashoka, Echoing Green, Open Society Institute, and the Albert Schweitzer Fellows Program. She has been a featured speaker at the Aspen Ideas Festival, the Smithsonian Symposium on American Philanthropy, TEDx Washington Square, TEDx Baltimore and Emerson Collective Demo Day.

Sarah received her undergraduate degree (2002) and Ph.D. (2010) in biomedical engineering from Johns Hopkins University. Her work on the role of the cerebellum and the primary motor cortex on the time scales of consolidation of motor memory was published in the Journal of Neuroscience, Journal of Neurophysiology, and Cerebral Cortex. She received the prestigious Siebel Scholars Award for outstanding work in the field of technology and engineering.

Sarah is an adjunct assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Department of Biomedical Engineering where her work focuses on the integration of academic and cultural excellence.