Shannon is a Research Associate with Cascadia Research Collective. She is a broadly-trained research wildlife biologist having studied various species from dolphins to lynx, in diverse environments from tropical jungles to polar ice, utilizing many different research tools stretching from eDNA from wolf prints in snow to the capture-mark-recapture of whale flukes and tiger stripes. She completed her PhD in 2006 studying elk calf survival and causes of mortality in Yellowstone National Park and was a postdoctoral scholar at Scripps Institution of Oceanography examining emperor penguin populations. She has published more than 55 peer-reviewed scientific articles on topics including population demographics, behavior, disease, acoustics, radiotelemetry, genetics, blood values, animal capture and handling, wildlife trade, etc. She has worked for state and federal governments, academia, business, and nonprofits. She has served on two IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Species Survival Commission Specialist Groups and as a representative to the United States Interagency CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) Committee.