SpaceX is expected to price what could be the largest initial public offering — a stock market debut — in American history. The company Elon Musk founded in a converted warehouse with a dream of reaching Mars will carry a valuation that rivals some of the most established names in aerospace, defence, and technology combined.
And somewhere in the middle of that milestone is Gwynne Shotwell.
SpaceX's president and chief operating officer — the person responsible for the day-to-day running of the company — is expected to see her stake in the business cross $1 billion at the anticipated IPO price. After 24 years of building the company from the inside out, she is about to become a billionaire.
But here's what makes that remarkable: almost nobody outside the aerospace industry could pick her out of a lineup. In a business culture that turns founders into demigods and plastered Musk's face across every SpaceX success story, Shotwell spent two and a half decades doing something far less glamorous than visionary rhetoric. She built the actual company. She hired the engineers, signed the contracts, steadied the culture, and — by most accounts from people who've worked alongside both of them — managed Elon Musk.
That's the real leadership story of tonight's IPO. Not the rocket. The person who made the rocket survivable.
