Shannon is Executive Director of the Public Lab nonprofit. With over fifteen years of experience in community organizing and education, Shannon has worked with environment and public health groups across the United States addressing declining freshwater resources, coastal land loss and building participatory monitoring programs with communities neighboring industrial facilities and impacted by the BP oil spill.

She is acting Vice Chair of the [U.S. EPA] National Advisory Council on Environmental Policy and Technology, Vice Chair on the Board of Directors of the Citizen Science Association, a co-organizer for the Gathering for Open Science Hardware (GOSH), and serves on advisory boards, councils or working groups for the National Parks Conservation Association, the Louisiana Public Health Institute, the Louisiana Bar Association and the Citizen Science Association. Shannon is an Ashoka Fellow, a 2015-16 Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society Fellow and a current Research Affiliate, a Senior Fellow of the Environmental Leadership Program and a 2012 Loyola University Institute for Environmental Communications Fellow. She has an MS in Anthropology and Nonprofit Management.