Gwynne Shotwell

SpaceX President and Chief Operating Officer (COO)

Gwynne Shotwell

Gwynne was hired in 2002 just after SpaceX was founded, becoming SpaceX’s seventh employee.

2019 Viterbi Awards - Gwynne Shotwell

Shotwell was raised in Libertyville, Ill., a suburb about 40 miles north of Chicago. Her father is a brain surgeon and her mother an artist.

Gwynne received a MS/BS in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Math from Northwestern University USA in 1987.

Gwynne worked for a company called Microcosm where Dr. Hans Konigsmann was also working who introduced her to Elon Musk.

Shotwell is married to an engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and has a son and a daughter.

Gwynne Shotwell, the Woman Who Keeps SpaceX Alive

“The public may not be as aware of her, but in the space community she is as big of a rock star as he is. If someone wants a keynote speaker or someone to testify at a congressional hearing, it’s always, ‘Let’s get Gwynne.’ ”

Musk’s strategy made Shotwell’s job crucial. She had to sell a rocket to satellite companies, even though the rocket had never actually flown, and she had to persuade NASA and the military to fund SpaceX’s demonstration flights. The company’s early customers: the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the U.S. military’s research arm, which paid for its first three launches, and a Malaysian state-owned satellite startup, which paid for a fourth. The final and most important early backer: NASA, which in 2006 awarded SpaceX a $400 million contract to develop a larger rocket, Falcon 9, that would be capable of bringing cargo and people to the International Space Station. “That astonished people,” says Koenigsmann, SpaceX’s vice president for mission assurance and a longtime friend of Shotwell’s. “She was selling stuff to NASA at a time when we had a little rocket on an island. That takes bravery and vision.”

Shotwell has earned a reputation as the person who can translate Musk’s visions into reality. “She’s the bridge between Elon and the staff,” Koenigsmann continues. “Elon says let’s go to Mars and she says, ‘OK, what do we need to actually get to Mars?’ ”