Gwynne Shotwell

Gwynne Shotwell is SpaceX's president and COO, managing the operations of the commercial space exploration company founded by Elon Musk. Shotwell joined the company in 2002 as its seventh employee. Before that, she was at Microcosm, Inc. as space systems director and The Aerospace Corporation as a senior project engineer. Her estimated net worth is $620 million, ranking her fortieth on Forbes' 2022 America's Self-Made Women. In 2021, she ranked #38 on Forbes' Power Women list. She is also named on Time's 100 Most Influential People of 2020 list.

Gwynne Shotwell, President and COO of SpaceX - Stanford Graduate School of Business - June 3, 2022

Gwynne Shotwell joined SpaceX in August 2002, three months after the company was founded, as vice president of business development to generate and manage SpaceX’s customer base and the company’s strategic and government relations. She was the company's seventh employee.

As SpaceX's head of business development, Shotwell was in charge of selling the company’s standardized rocket launches to private companies. She was instrumental in securing investment from NASA to develop a reusable launch rocket, the Falcon. She built the Falcon vehicle family manifest to more than one hundred launches, representing nearly $15 billion in revenue. In 2008, after the Falcon successfully reached orbit, NASA awarded SpaceX a $1.6 billion-dollar contract to develop a capsule capable of docking with and supplying the International Space Station.

Gwynne Shotwell - Photo Credit: Michael Deep / SpaceFlight Insider

In December 2008, Shotwell was named president of SpaceX. In her new role, she became part of the office of the chairman and CEO and reported to Elon Musk, focusing on the operational activities of SpaceX, including sales, marketing, manufacturing, launch operations, legal, government relations, and finance.

“Gwynne is dynamic,” says Tim Hughes, senior vice president and general counsel at SpaceX. “She’s a rare mix of engineering talent, business acumen, and likability. That has allowed her to do extremely amazing things.”

Under her leadership, SpaceX has achieved several milestones:

• The first private company to successfully launch, orbit, and recover a spacecraft, to send a spacecraft to the International Space Station, and to send a satellite into GEO orbit
• The first private company to send astronauts to the ISS
• 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
• The first re-flight of a commercial cargo spacecraft.

Gwynne Shotwell has served on the board of Polaris since 2019 and serves as a director of the Minerva Project. She also is a Northwestern University trustee and in the past served as a member of the Advisory Council for Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering.

Cover of Northwestern magazine featuring Gwynne Shotwell "Rocket Ma'am"

In 2004, she was elected to the California Space Authority board of directors and served on its executive committee. Additionally, she served as chairperson of the AIAA space systems technical committee and as an officer of the AIAA Los Angeles Chapter. In 2013, she was named a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA).

In 2014, Shotwell was appointed to the United States Export-Import Bank’s advisory committee and the Federal Aviation Administration’s management advisory council. She was also awarded the World Technology Award for Individual Achievement in Space in 2011.

In 2012, Shotwell was inducted into the Women in Technology(WITI) hall of fame and, in 2018, she was awarded the Ralph Coats Roe Medal by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). She is a two-time winner of Via Satellite’s Executive of the Year award in both 2017 and 2020. She also participated in the Frank J. Redd Student scholarship competition, helping the committee raise over $350,000 in scholarships in six years.

Gwynne Shotwell began her engineering career at Chrysler Motors. She initially pursued a career in automotive engineering before returning for her master's in applied mathematics at Northwestern University.

After graduating with her master's in 1988, Shotwell joined The Aerospace Corporation. There, she focused on thermal analysis and wrote numerous research papers on various aspects of small spacecraft design and vehicle re-entry operational risks. She was promoted to the role of chief engineer of an MLV-class satellite program, managed a landmark study for the Federal Aviation Administration on commercial space transportation, and completed an extensive analysis of space policy for NASA’s future investment in space transportation.

After ten years at The Aerospace Corporation, Shotwell left in 1998 to become the director of the space systems division at Microcosm Inc., a small company that specialized in building low-cost rocketry for the United States Air Force.

Gwynne Shotwell earned a bachelor's in mechanical engineering with honors in 1986 from Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering and a master's in applied mathematics with honors in 1988 from Northwestern University.

Shotwell graduated from Libertyville High School in Illinois in 1982. Before high school, she already had an interest in machines. In the third grade, her mother bought her a book on engines because she had questions about how engines worked, which led to her interest in car engines, gears, and differentials. In high school, Shotwell was an A-student who played varsity basketball and was on the cheerleading team. It was her mother who suggested she become an engineer and took her to a Society of Women Engineers panel at the Illinois Institute of Technology while still in high school. There, she found out what she wanted to do for a career.

Gwynne Shotwell is married to an engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and has a son and a daughter. Her father is a brain surgeon, her mother an artist, and she is the middle child of three girls.