On June 5, the New York Times reported that as SpaceX prepares for its blockbuster initial public offering (IPO), President and Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell is the company’s “anchor”, not CEO Elon Musk.
SpaceX President Shotwell
As CEO of SpaceX, Musk dined with Trump at the White House, accompanied Trump on a trip to China, and testified against rival Sam Altman in a high-profile trial that he ultimately lost.
In contrast, Shotwell's journey over the past six months has been very different. She spoke at a telecommunications industry show in Barcelona, Spain, to promote SpaceX's satellite internet service Starlink. She met with politicians in India, a country seen as a potentially huge market for SpaceX. In addition, she attended a White House event with a number of technology industry executives to pledge that their data centers would not drive up energy prices for Americans.
stabilizer
For 24 years, Shotwell has played a complementary "stabilizer" role to Musk at SpaceX. While Musk was advising Trump and running Tesla and other companies, she was single-mindedly focused on growing SpaceX's business, helping the rocket and satellite maker grow into a company valued at more than $1 trillion.
That job, and her unwavering loyalty to Musk, made her one of the most powerful female executives in the world. Now, as SpaceX prepares for its blockbuster IPO this month, she's being thrust into the spotlight. Unlike Musk, Shotwell, 62, has long kept a low profile. She rarely posts on social media, and when she does, it's usually for SpaceX business and only occasionally appears in public.
Perhaps her most notable attribute is her ability to stick with Musk for decades, even as the tech billionaire has replaced successive executives at his other companies. Two former SpaceX executives, who spoke on condition of anonymity to maintain personal relationships, described her in one word: "survivor."
In a 2018 TED conference interview, Shotwell explained how she worked with Musk. She said she never directly told Musk that his ambitions were impossible, but would "find a way to make it happen."
“I loved working for Elon,” she said. “I always felt like my job was to turn these ideas into company goals and make them achievable.”
Musk
Shotwell's efforts have also been generously rewarded, and she has accumulated enough SpaceX shares to make her a billionaire. Last year, she became the company's highest-paid executive, with total compensation of more than $85 million, according to SpaceX filings.
"Elon represents excellence in innovation and vision, and Gwen is the engine that makes everything work as planned. This is an incredible partnership." Peter Diamandis, a SpaceX investor and founder of the XPrize Foundation, a non-profit organization that supports technology development, said.
Employee 7
Shotwell studied mechanical engineering as an undergraduate and holds a master's degree in applied mathematics from Northwestern University. She worked at Chrysler before moving to California in the late 1980s to take a job at a space research nonprofit. In 2002, she met Musk, co-founder of the electronic payments company PayPal. That year, after PayPal was sold to eBay, Musk decided to invest some of the money from the deal into a rocket startup.
During their first meeting, Shotwell suggested that Musk hire a full-time business person for SpaceX. But when Musk asked her to join, she said she was satisfied with the job at the time. She said in a Stanford Graduate School of Business podcast interview that she hesitated for about a month before finally accepting Musk's invitation.
"I called him and said, 'I was such a stupid idiot,'" Shotwell said. Subsequently, she became SpaceX’s seventh employee.
In its early days, SpaceX was focused on proving Musk's vision: that it could build rockets cheaper than those used by NASA. The company designed its own rocket components and tested them on an island in the South Pacific, where employees witnessed explosion after explosion.
In 2015, SpaceX successfully landed and recovered the first reusable rocket booster, which significantly reduced the cost of launching satellites and other equipment into orbit. One of those customers was Facebook (now Meta). In a deal negotiated by Shotwell, Facebook contracted with SpaceX to launch a $200 million satellite aimed at providing internet connectivity to sub-Saharan Africa.
People who understand Musk
But the satellite ultimately failed to enter space. During a pre-launch test, the SpaceX rocket carrying the satellite exploded. According to two people familiar with the matter, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg criticized SpaceX on social media, which angered Musk. Shotwell dissuaded Musk from attacking Zuckerberg on social media, people familiar with the matter said.
Former SpaceX executives said Shotwell was one of the few people who could calm Musk's impulsive behavior. Some call her the “Elon translator” because of her knack for cleaning up messes, digesting bad news, and making it acceptable to Musk.
"I like him more in person than what he looks like on Twitter," Shotwell said of her boss on the Stanford Graduate School of Business podcast. "In fact, a lot of the time I feel like they're two different people."
Shotwell also demonstrated her influence over Musk in 2016. Three former SpaceX executives say she helped push Musk to publicly endorse Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in an interview with CNBC. In that interview, Musk called Trump "not the right person" while saying Clinton's environmental policies "are the right direction." However, Musk has since become a Trump supporter.
Employee resonance
Four former employees said Shotwell was willing to listen to feedback and encouraged employees to email her after company meetings. In 2021, an employee at SpaceX’s interstellar base at the Boca Chica launch site in Texas recalled that after another executive was fired, Shotwell stepped in to streamline operational processes and make personnel arrangements. She gave her employees 15 minutes each to meet with her, but on one condition: "No spoilers."
Holland-Thiellen says Shotwell has more human touch than Musk
Shotwell also hosts weekly meetings with SpaceX executives, sometimes without Musk, that delve into the details and technical issues of the company's different business segments, two people who attended the meetings said. She also regularly hosts gatherings for female SpaceX employees.
"She's a role model that I can see myself in," said Paige Holland-Thielen, a former SpaceX engineer. "I will never be Musk because I'm a woman, but she seems a lot more human than Musk."
Defending Musk
Still, Shotwell has proven time and again to be Musk’s ultimate defender.
In 2022, "Business Insider" published an article stating that SpaceX paid hush money to a flight attendant who accused Musk of exchanging money for sexual services. Shotwell subsequently sent a letter to employees stating that the allegations were false, "not because I work for Elon, but because I have worked closely with him for 20 years and have never seen or heard of anything similar to these allegations." Musk has also denied any wrongdoing.
When SpaceX employees, including Holland-Thiellen, raised concerns about Musk's alleged behavior and his online activities, Shotwell was initially receptive. But after the employees wrote an open letter and attracted media attention, Shotwell told Holland-Thielen and others that they were disrupting the company.
These employees were eventually fired. When the employees were fired, Shotwell participated in some meetings by phone, according to a complaint filed with the National Labor Relations Board.
As SpaceX approaches its IPO, Shotwell has begun to appear more in public events. In March this year, she attended the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and promoted Starlink mobile business at the meeting. The new service allows users to make phone calls via SpaceX's satellites. On social media, she said that Starlink plays the role of "David" (the biblical David against Goliath) when competing with giants such as Verizon and AT&T.
"We look forward to bringing Starlink to your country." Shotwell posted in April this year.
Promote AI
Recently, Shotwell has moved into an area in which she has little expertise: artificial intelligence.
Musk merged SpaceX with his artificial intelligence company xAI in February and refocused the combined entity on developing orbital data centers. Shotwell has since taken over and advanced the vision. However, some investors still have questions about how SpaceX, a company originally focused on rockets and "sending humans to Mars," is related to artificial intelligence.
“I actually think we could have a constellation of AI satellites in orbit before we even build the capabilities needed to power data centers here on Earth,” Shotwell said in a recent interview with Time magazine.
As of press time, Musk, Shotwell and SpaceX spokespersons have not commented on this.