Gwynne Shotwell (néeRowley, previously Gurevich; born November 23, 1963[1]) is an American businesswoman 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.[2]
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.[6] There, she served on the executive committee and was responsible for business development.[13]
Shotwell left Microcosm in 2002 to join SpaceX, a private, commercial, space exploration company founded by Elon Musk in the same year.[14] She was introduced to Musk through her former Microcosm colleague Hans Koenigsmann who had joined SpaceX.[15] 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.[16] 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.[17] This followed SpaceX's first successful launch of the Falcon 1 on its fourth attempt earlier in the year.[18] She was responsible for leading the effort on building the Falcon Vehicle manifest to over 50 launches, generating $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.[12] Shotwell is currently the President and COO of SpaceX, responsible for day-to-day operations and managing all customer and strategic relations to support company growth.[19]
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.[12] SpaceX has a multibillion-dollar contract with NASA to deliver astronauts and science instruments to the International Space Station. On May 30, 2020, SpaceX became the first private company to launch two astronauts to Earth orbit.[20]
In February 2019, Polaris Industries announced that Shotwell would join their board of directors in March.[21]
Shotwell has served on the California Space Authority Board of Directors and its executive committee after she was elected in 2004. She has served as 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 6 years.[22]
Shotwell has been criticized for her response to several alleged cases of sexism, sexual harassment and assault at SpaceX.[23][24]
Following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Shotwell led negotiations with government agencies for requested Starlink satellite services in the country,[25] which were at first donated by SpaceX.[26] These arrangements were later formalized in a DoD contract to buy Starlink for Ukraine.[27] Earlier, Shotwell had announced that her company took measures to prevent the use of Starlink to control combat drones.[28] She stated Ukrainians had used the service in ways not part of the agreement, as she had accepted 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.[28][29][30]
Shotwell gave a TEDx Talk at TEDxChapmanU in June 2013 on the importance of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.[31] 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.[32]
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.[34]
2020: Elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2020 for bringing affordable, commercially competitive space transportation to NASA and the US National Security Space Launch.
^ abShotwell, Gwynne (June 4, 2014). Discussion with Gwynne Shotwell, President and COO, SpaceX. Atlantic Council. Event occurs at 22:35–26:20. Archived from the original on January 25, 2017. Retrieved June 9, 2014. This [reusable launch vehicle technology], all this innovation is being done by SpaceX alone, no one is paying us to do it. The government is very interested in the data we are collecting on this test series. ... This is the kind of thing that entrepreneurial investment and new entrants/innovators can do for an industry: fund their own improvements, both in the quality of their programs and the quality of their hardware, and the speed and cadence of their operations.
Shotwell, Gwynne (February 3, 2016). Gwynne Shotwell comments at Commercial Space Transportation Conference. Commercial Spaceflight. Event occurs at 2:43:15–3:10:05. Retrieved February 4, 2016. (after 2:53:00, and a review of video of several failed attempts to land a booster rocket on a drone ship, and then a successful return of an orbital first stage to a landing pad) It's awesome. You know, I don't think you get that kind of thrill in banking. It's extraordinary.
