Donna Shirley is a former manager of Mars Exploration at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She is the author of the book Managing Martians: The Extraordinary Story of a Woman's Lifelong Quest to Get to Mars—and of the Team Behind the Space Robot That Has Captured the Imagination of the World. She was an associate dean of engineering for 3 years at the University of Oklahoma between 2000 and 2003. She then went on to be the founding director of the Science Fiction Museum in Seattle.
Asteroid 5624 Shirley was named in her honor.
She was born in Wynnewood, Oklahoma, and in 2003 was inducted in the Oklahoma Women's Hall of Fame.