Shannon joined the Pacific Institute in 2021 and currently serves as the Associate Director, Water and Climate Equity. Her work focuses on water and climate environmental justice for frontline communities. Her work is interdisciplinary and cross-cultural, incorporating the social and natural sciences along with different ways of knowing to understand human-environment relationships and how people are impacted by and respond to environmental change. Her research has focused on climate change science and policy, water resources and drought preparedness, and climate planning and action, with a strong focus on supporting those at highest risk through just and equitable solutions.   

Shannon was formerly an associate scientist and Advanced Study Program Fellow at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and a research scientist at the North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center at Colorado State University where she led several projects coproducing science and decision support tools with and for agency and Tribal decision makers. Shannon was an author on the third and fourth U.S. National Climate Assessments and was on the steering committee and an author on the first Status of Tribes and Climate Change.  She was a steering committee member for the third,  fourth, and fifth National Adaptation Forums.    

Shannon holds an M.A. in International Environmental Policy from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey and a Ph.D. in Environmental Change and Sustainability Science (Ecological Anthropology, Ecology, Climatology) from the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) in the interdisciplinary Resilience and Adaptation Program. At UAF she was a National Science Foundation (NSF) Integrative Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) Fellow then an NSF Graduate Research Fellow. ScholarGPS, the academic ranking platform, named Shannon a Top Scholar, placing her in the top .5% worldwide in the Adaptation specialty.