Shannon Gilmartin
Shannon K. Gilmartin, PhD, is the Director of Research at the Stanford VMware Women's Leadership Innovation Lab and Adjunct Professor in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University. Her expertise is in education and workforce development in science and engineering fields. She has particular interest in access to and equity in engineering education and practice. She studies people’s pathways into the engineering workforce and advancement to senior leadership positions in technology settings.
Shannon’s publications appear in such journals as Creativity and Innovation Management, Engineering Studies, Journal of Engineering Education, Journal of Research on Science Teaching, Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering, The Journal of Higher Education, and the International Journal of Engineering Education. From 2015-19, with Sheri Sheppard and Carol Muller, she co-taught the first course in Stanford’s School of Engineering to be cross-listed with Stanford’s Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity and Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies programs: "Expanding Engineering Limits: Culture, Diversity, and Equity” (ENGR117/217, FEMGEN117/217, CSRE 117/217). In 2018, her research with Anthony Antonio, Samantha Brunhaver, Helen Chen, and Sheri Sheppard was published in the National Bureau of Economics Research volume U.S. Engineering in the Global Economy (The University of Chicago Press). She co-led, with Sara Jordan-Bloch, the Leadership Lab’s Corporate Program Meeting on Early Career Pathways in 2019. She is currently conducting an ongoing Lab study of gender, race, and work assignments in technology companies. She has long collaborated with many undergraduate students, graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, research scientists, and faculty members across a range of disciplines in large-scale studies of student experiences, workforce trends, and women’s and men’s school and employment patterns.
Shannon received her BA at Stanford University in 1994, and her MA (1999) and PhD (2003) at University of California, Los Angeles. She then spent three years at the California Institute of Technology conducting postdoctoral research on the science identities of middle and high school students across diverse school districts in Southern California. She has consulted for a wide range of organizations, including the American Chemical Society, Stanford University School of Medicine, and University of Alaska School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences.
Select Recent Publications
Gilmartin, Shannon K., Samantha R. Brunhaver, Sara Jordan-Bloch, Gabriela Gall Rosa, Caroline Simard & Sheri D. Sheppard (2024) Early-Career Assignments and Workforce Inequality in Engineering, Engineering Studies, 16:1, 8-32, DOI: 10.1080/19378629.2023.2272807
Bjorklund, T., S. K. Gilmartin, and S. D. Sheppard. 2022. The dynamics of innovation efforts in the early career. Creativity and Innovation Management, 1– 20. DOI: 10.1111/caim.12534
Gilmartin, S., A. Harris, C. Martin-Ebosele, and S. Sheppard. 2022, February. In the Climate Crisis, We Can’t Forget the Who. ASEE Prism.
Macke, E. G. Gall Rosa, S. Gilmartin, and C. Simard. 2022, January 4. Assignments Are Critical Tools to Achieve Workplace Gender Equity. MIT Sloan Management Review.
Sterling, A. D., M. E. Thompson, S. Wang, A. Kusimo, S. Gilmartin, and S. Sheppard. 2020. The confidence gap predicts the gender pay gap among STEM graduates. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 202010269; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2010269117
Gilmartin, S. K, M. E. Thompson, E. Morton, Q. Jin, H. L. Chen, A. Colby, and S. D. Sheppard. 2019. Entrepreneurial intent of engineering and business undergraduate students. The Journal of Engineering Education, 108, 316–336.
Rieken, B., S. Shapiro, S. Gilmartin, and S. D. Sheppard. 2019, January 4. How Mindfulness Can Help Engineers Solve Problems. Harvard Business Review.
Steuer-Dankert, L., S. K. Gilmartin, C. B. Muller, C. Dungs, S. Sheppard, and C. Leicht-Scholten. 2019. Expanding Engineering Limits—A concept for socially responsible education of engineers. International Journal of Engineering Education, 35 (2), 658–673.
Wullert, K., S. Gilmartin, and C. Simard. 2019, April 16. The Mistake Companies Make When They Use Data to Plan Diversity Efforts. Harvard Business Review.
Gilmartin, S.K., A.L. Antonio, S.R. Brunhaver, H.L. Chen, and S.D. Sheppard. 2018. Career plans of undergraduate engineering students: Characteristics and contexts. In R. Freeman and H. Salzman (Eds.), U.S. Engineering in the Global Economy (pp. 49-86). National Bureau of Economic Research. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Gilmartin, S. K., A. Shartrand, H. Chen, C. Estrada, and S.D. Sheppard. 2016. Investigating entrepreneurship program models in undergraduate engineering education. International Journal of Engineering Education, 32(5A), 2048-2065.