Shawn Lawrence Otto is a Hollywood screenwriter/producer/director and a political strategist, as well as CEO of Science Debate 2008, a national initiative to mount a presidential candidates debate on science and technology policy.

In Hollywood he is best known as the writer and co-producer of House of Sand and Fog, and Hubble, which won the Sloan Fellowship for best science screenplay, and is slowly working its way through the system. He is a frequent speaker on politics and science. His wife Rebecca is the state auditor of Minnesota, and they live with their son in a passive solar, wind-powered, super-insulated home he designed and built with his own hands, and which more than 10,000 people have toured.