A founder of Public Lab, Shannon is based in New Orleans as Executive Director of the organization, managing the work of the Public Lab nonprofit. With a background in community organizing and education, Shannon held positions with the Anthropology and Geography Department at Louisiana State University as a Community Researcher and Ethnographer on a study about the social impacts of the BP oil spill in coastal Louisiana and worked at the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, conducting the first on-the-ground health and economic impact surveying in Louisiana post-spill. Shannon is specifically interested in infusing traditional organizing methods of the environmental sector with new media technologies and tools.

She has an MS in Anthropology and Nonprofit Management and has worked with nonprofits for over fourteen years. She is a Senior Fellow of the Environmental Leadership Program, a 2012 Loyola University Institute for Environmental Communications Fellow, on the advisory board of Global Community Monitor and the Louisiana Public Health Institute Healthy Communities Coalition, a member of the Citizen Science Association web and communications steering committee, on the Leaders Council for the National Parks Conservation Association, a reviewer for the National Science Foundation DRL, and a member of the Louisiana Bar Association technology committee.