Gwynne Shotwell

Gwynne Shotwell ( Rowley, previously Gurevich; born November 23, 1963 ) is an American business executive and engineer. She is the president and chief operating officer of SpaceX, an American space transportation company, where she is responsible for day-to-day operations and company growth.

Early life Shotwell was born in Evanston, Illinois, as the middle of three daughters. In 1969, when she was five years old, she watched a television broadcast of the Apollo 11 mission with her family, but remembers finding it "boring" and was not interested in space at the time. Shotwell excelled in both academics and athletics in high school, where she was on the cheerleading and varsity basketball teams while achieving at the top of her class. Following this, she decided to apply to Northwestern University, where she received a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering, and later a Master of Science degree in applied mathematics.

Career At the beginning of her career, Shotwell had an interview with IBM on the day of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, which disturbed her and she did not get a job offer. Instead, Shotwell took a job in the automotive industry at Chrysler Corporation's management training program, which she initially enjoyed

In 1988, Shotwell began work at the El Segundo research center of The Aerospace Corporation, and did technical work on military space research and development contracts. An early project she worked on was Space Transportation Systems 39 (STS-39), a crewed spaceflight.

She left The Aerospace Corporation in 1998 to become director of the space systems division at Microcosm Inc., a small rocket company in El Segundo.

SpaceX

Shotwell left Microcosm in 2002 to join SpaceX, a private, commercial, space exploration company founded by Elon Musk in the same year. She was introduced to Musk through her former Microcosm colleague Hans Koenigsmann who had joined SpaceX. In that meeting, she convinced Musk that SpaceX should hire a dedicated employee to work on business development full-time, but had not planned to join the company herself. Shotwell took the job two weeks later in September 2002. In December 2008, Shotwell was promoted to company president following her role in the successful negotiation of the first Commercial Resupply Services contract with the NASA Associate Administrator Bill Gerstenmaier. This followed SpaceX's first successful launch of the Falcon 1 on its fourth attempt earlier in the year. She was responsible for leading the effort on building the Falcon Vehicle manifest to over 50 launches, generating US$5 billion in revenue. This included a commercial connection to the International Space Station for resupplying services, where they were able to deliver cargo and supplies to the astronauts.

She oversaw the first landing of an orbital rocket's first stage on land and on an ocean platform, the first relaunch and landing of a used orbital rocket, the first controlled flyback and recovery of a payload fairing, and the first re-flight of a commercial cargo spacecraft.

Shotwell has received particular praise from NASA Administrator Bill Nelson for her "phenomenal" leadership of SpaceX as it developed the Falcon 9 into the "workhorse" of the space launch sector. Nelson had reportedly been concerned in 2022, after Elon Musk purchased Twitter, that it would distract Musk from focusing on SpaceX, but became more comfortable after meetings with Shotwell left him feeling reassured that she was in charge of day-to-day operations.

In March 2019, Shotwell joined the board of directors of Polaris Industries.

Shotwell has been on the California Space Authority board of directors and its executive committee after she was elected in 2004. She has been an officer on the AIAA Space Systems Technical Committee and participates in a variety of STEM related programs. She led a committee that raised over $350,000 in scholarships for the Frank J. Redd Student Competition over six years.

Starlink use in Ukraine

Following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Shotwell led negotiations with Ukrainian government agencies for Starlink satellite services, which were at first donated by SpaceX. These arrangements were later formalized in a US Department of Defense contract to buy Starlink for Ukraine. Earlier, Shotwell had announced that her company took measures to prevent the use of Starlink to control combat drones. She stated Ukrainians had used the service in ways that were not part of the agreement; she had agreed to donate Starlink satellite services for communications, defense and humanitarian purposes such as "ambulances, hospitals and mothers", but had not intended it to be weaponized for drone strikes.

Public outreach Shotwell gave a TED talk at TEDxChapmanU in June 2013 on the importance of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). She speaks regularly to business audiences and gave a talk for the "Captains of Industry" series at the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security in June 2014 on private entrepreneurial accomplishments in advancing spaceflight technology.

At the 2018 TED conference, Shotwell was interviewed by Chris Anderson about the future plans of SpaceX.

At the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing on September 28, 2018, Shotwell's talk was titled "Launching Our Future" and she discussed her vision and advancements for aerospace technology, as well as why diversity and the inclusion of women are necessary to advance as a society.

Personal life Shotwell is married to Robert Shotwell, an engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She has two children from a previous marriage with Leon Gurevich.

Shotwell owns a ranch in Texas, which she considers to be her "home office."

Honors and awards 2012: Women in Technology International Hall of Fame 2018: Forbes' America's Top 50 Women In Tech 2018: Business Insider, Most powerful female engineer 2020: Time 100 most influential people 2020: Satellite Executive of the Year 2020: Elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering 2023: Ranked 28th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes 2023: Ranked 54th on Fortune 's list of Most Powerful Women