Getting involved in a fight between one of the world's wealthiest people and the president wasn't easy. But Shotwell found a way to calm things down. She assured officials at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration that the company and agency would make it through the situation, according to Brian Hughes, who served as NASA's chief of staff last year.
Shotwell has long played an expansive role at SpaceX, which in December confirmed it was preparing for a potential public offering that some bankers believe would raise more than $30 billion for the company. Shotwell is about to be pushed into the spotlight as SpaceX considers whether or not to move forward with an offering that would expose the company to the scrutiny of the public markets.
At SpaceX, Shotwell is a customer emissary, a diplomat for an increasingly global company and the top day-to-day leader of a group of executives who have bought into its intense culture. With many government leaders, she serves as a Musk translator, especially for officials who depend on SpaceX but are occasionally unnerved by his activities.
She often works through back channels, tapping the credibility she and SpaceX have built up over the years. People who know her say she is tough but charismatic, able to build and sustain business relationships.
"She's been the steady hand," said Bill Nelson, a former Democratic senator from Florida who ran NASA during the Biden administration and met Shotwell when the company was a startup. "I have a great deal of confidence in her. Because of that, I have a great deal of confidence in SpaceX."
Shotwell hasn't publicly discussed the company's IPO preparations. She and SpaceX didn't respond to requests for comment.
Shotwell, 62 years old, grew up outside of Chicago. The middle daughter of a brain surgeon father and a mother who was an artist, according to a Los Angeles Times article from a dozen years ago, she took an interest in machines at an early age.
Her mother took her to a Society of Women Engineers event as a teenager, where she was impressed by a panelist and decided that day she would become a mechanical engineer.
She earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and a master's in applied mathematics from Northwestern University. She began her career at what was then Chrysler Motors, but soon moved to Southern California and took a job working at Aerospace Corp., a nonprofit that works closely with the Pentagon on space missions.
After a decade there, Shotwell took a role at another space company, called Microcosm. Then a new opportunity emerged when Musk founded SpaceX in 2002. Shotwell got a job interview with the executive, and then an offer. After hesitating to sign on with what was then a startup without a product, she dove in.
"I called him on the phone and I said, 'I've been a bleeping idiot,' and he laughed and he said, 'Welcome to the team,' " Shotwell said during a discussion at Stanford University in 2022.
Her first job was as vice president of business development, a sales-focused position that put her in contact with government officials and satellite executives around the world. Musk promoted her to president in 2008, the same year the company landed a $1.6 billion NASA cargo-transport deal that helped prevent it from going under.
She's held that position ever since, helping to see SpaceX through difficult setbacks and set it up for a remarkable run.
Musk founded the company to try to send crews to settle Mars. Employees are still working on that mission. Meanwhile, SpaceX has revolutionized rocket and satellite operations, in part by questioning the industry's conventional wisdom and learning from its failures.
The company showed it could land a booster for reuse, and then did so hundreds of times. In 2020, it flew astronauts to the International Space Station from the U.S. for the first time since the final NASA space shuttle flight nine years earlier. SpaceX created Starlink, a business providing high-speed internet service using what is now the largest satellite fleet in history.
Dan Goldberg, chief executive of Telesat, the Canada-based satellite operator that both purchases SpaceX launches and competes with Starlink, has known Shotwell for years. She hasn't changed during SpaceX's rise, he said: "Given all that they've achieved with her as president, I admire the groundedness."
Shotwell has cultivated an unusual relationship with Musk, one that now spans nearly a quarter-century. Few in his orbit have been able to maintain their standing with him for such a long stretch.
She has been fierce in defending Musk, including after allegations emerged that he harassed a flight attendant, who told SpaceX about it. Musk has called those allegations untrue.
A group of SpaceX employees later posted an internal letter protesting what they saw as the company's failure to take harassment allegations seriously. Shotwell took issue with the letter, saying other staffers complained that it interfered with their work, The Wall Street Journal has reported. Several employees were fired for their involvement. She has said SpaceX fully investigates all complaints of harassment and takes appropriate actions.
One former employee at SpaceX said Shotwell understood there were lines she couldn't cross with Musk and battles she wouldn't win with him. This person recalled how a well-regarded engineer at the company was having difficult runs in with Musk. Shotwell talked Musk out of firing the engineer several times, but ultimately couldn't protect the person, the former employee said. The engineer was let go.
A key task Shotwell has handled over the years is selling SpaceX's approach. Rocket and spacecraft development has often been a slow process, controlled by government agencies, but SpaceX presses to move aggressively. It makes frequent changes to improve hardware and questions assumptions about developing space technology.
During an event in 2023, Shotwell referenced the push-and-pull between the company and NASA as they worked on missions years before. "You can talk to any NASA leader at that time -- we drove them crazy," she said.
Her job also includes trying to ensure the company's intense culture doesn't dissipate. SpaceX demands much of its staff, asking young engineers to take "extreme ownership" over difficult technical tasks. Some former employees have talked about burning out at SpaceX, but still are amazed at what they were able to accomplish during their runs at the company. One joked in an interview a few months ago his team only worked 50 to 60 hours a week -- a relatively calm pace.
Shotwell, who is married and has two children from her first marriage>, lives on her ranch in Texas not far from a SpaceX testing facility in McGregor. She has talked about how she doesn't need to work as intensely as she did for so many years, and Forbes estimated she already is a billionaire.
But in many ways, the toughest stretch for SpaceX remains ahead.
The company has to figure out how to make Starship, a powerful two-stage rocket, operational and scale up flights. Last year, the vehicle failed during three test missions, and engineers dealt with an accident on the ground with part of the vehicle in November. Starship is an important part of NASA plans to take astronauts back to the surface of the moon, and Musk's ambition to colonize Mars.
SpaceX also wants to use Starship to deploy artificial-intelligence data centers into orbit, a technically unproven concept it is pursuing as it prepares for the potential IPO. The company has also taken on enormous new financial commitments, following deals last year worth more than $20 billion to acquire wireless spectrum.
Part of what has made Shotwell effective is that she has given the executives who report to her wide latitude to run programs and departments, people familiar with the matter said.
Many of them, including Mark Juncosa, an engineer with near-legendary status at SpaceX, and Lauren Dreyer, a vice president at Starlink, have been with the company for years. Yet Shotwell has the authority to make tough calls.
"The great thing about Gwynne is she's always stepped in where she feels the company most needs help," said Kathy Lueders,a former SpaceX executive who spent years as a high-ranking NASA official."People would say,'We need to turn to Gwynne on this one.' "