Shotwells to give SpaceX shares to about 2 million U.S. teens

Gift of SpaceX stock to children’s accounts

Lifestyles Magazine reports that Gwynne Shotwell, the president and chief operating officer of SpaceX, and her husband, Robert, an engineer, are giving more than 2 million shares of SpaceX stock to children’s Trump Accounts. The article says the shares will be distributed in December. It describes the recipients as American children who did not pay anything for the stock.

The article says the gift was first valued at about $320 million when it was announced. Because the award is in stock rather than cash, its value can change with the market, and the article says recent prices put it closer to $270 million. It adds that the gift is one of the largest direct personal stock gifts ever made to American children.

Who will receive the shares

According to Lifestyles Magazine, the first part of the gift goes to young people ages 11 to 17 in ZIP codes where median family income is $57,000 or less. The article says the plan also includes ZIP codes that are too small for the Census to publish an income figure, which brings in farm towns, ranch areas, and remote communities.

The article says a second part of the gift, which is to be completed within weeks, will go to children of service members stationed overseas, children in foster care, and additional children in Texas counties near the Shotwells’ home if family income is $90,000 or less. It says families can check whether they qualify through the nonprofit Invest America.

Shotwell wrote that “every American child under 18 can benefit from having a Trump Account,” but said the gift is aimed specifically at accounts for children ages 11 to 17 in lower-income areas, with added emphasis for those near central Texas. The article says the couple chose a group that public programs often miss.

Why the gift was possible

Lifestyles Magazine says the stock transfer required months of work because it had not been done before. The article says Trump Accounts were originally intended to hold index funds. It says only recent Treasury rules made it possible to place shares of one company into those accounts, and only if the gift went through a charity and received Treasury approval.

The article says the children will generally keep the shares for about five years. It reports that Shotwell made the promise before these structures existed and later helped turn the plan into reality. She thanked SpaceX, the Treasury, the IRS, the Dell Foundation, Greater Horizons, Invest America, and the law firms Morgan Lewis and Gibson Dunn for their roles.

Shotwell also praised Michael Dell and investor Brad Gerstner for their work on what she called children’s long-term financial security. The article says her gift became a model for a larger plan, and that Elon Musk has said he will give a SpaceX share to every American child next year.

Shotwell’s background and earlier giving

The article says Shotwell grew up in Libertyville, Illinois, as the middle of three daughters of a brain surgeon and an artist. In high school, she was a cheerleader, played varsity basketball, and ranked near the top of her class, but she did not know what career she wanted. She later said her mother took her to a Society of Women Engineers panel at the Illinois Institute of Technology without telling her where they were going because she would not have gone otherwise.

Shotwell said one mechanical engineer at the event stood out because of her appearance and made the field feel approachable. She said that after the panel she decided to become a mechanical engineer because she thought the speaker was cool. The article says that experience changed her path.

Shotwell later attended Northwestern University, where she was one of three women in a mechanical engineering class of 36. She later earned a master’s degree in applied mathematics, worked at Chrysler, spent 10 years in aerospace, and joined SpaceX in 2002 as one of its first employees. The article says she still helps run the company more than two decades later.

Lifestyles Magazine says Shotwell has also supported STEM education and student opportunities in other ways. It says she helped fund Northwestern’s Robot Design Studio, gave her ASME Ralph Coats Roe Medal to the university and donated the $12,000 honorarium to the Minerva Institute for Research and Scholarship, helped raise more than $1.8 million for STEM education, and helped lead a scholarship effort that raised more than $350,000 for a student space-research competition. The article says she told Northwestern graduates she was concerned about science and math test scores in the United States.

Central Texas and the message of the gift

The article says the Shotwells now live in central Texas on a 1,000-acre ranch they are gradually preparing to become a vineyard. It describes the project as patient and long term, similar to putting a share into a child’s account and waiting to see what develops.

Lifestyles Magazine says the share will not pay for college or guarantee a career, but it can give a teenager who has never owned anything a stake in rockets, satellites, and the idea of reaching Mars. The article closes by comparing the gift to the role model Shotwell once met as a teenager, saying that this December Gwynne and Robert Shotwell are trying to do that for two million young Americans at once.