Director and CEO of the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI), an affiliated institute at the University of California, Berkeley. ICSI drives pioneering research in computer science and machine learning and artificial intelligence through international collaboration. Previously, as founding director of the Wilson Center's Commons Lab and as a White House Presidential Innovation Fellow at NASA, Shanley co-founded the US Federal Community of Practice for crowdsourcing and citizen science.

She also co-led the development of citizenscience.gov, a US administration website designed to accelerate the use of crowdsourcing and citizen science in government. In addition, she catalysed government policy in support of citizen science, including the Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science Act and the 2015 White House Memorandum on the same fields.

Previously, she was an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science Fellow in the US Senate. She also spent a decade working with tribal governments and local communities to build decision support systems based on environmental management, community development and disaster management.