MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIFORNIA - NOVEMBER 03: (L-R) Nicole Shanahan and Sergey Brin attend the 2020 Breakthrough Prize Red Carpet at NASA Ames Research Center on November 03, 2019 in Mountain View, California.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIFORNIA - NOVEMBER 03: (L-R) Nicole Shanahan and Sergey Brin attend the 2020 Breakthrough Prize Red Carpet at NASA Ames Research Center on November 03, 2019 in Mountain View, California.

Silicon Valley entrepreneur and philanthropist Nicole Shanahan recently made headlines after a Wall Street Journal report claimed she allegedly had a brief affair with billionaire Elon Musk in December last year while she was still married to Google co-founder and Musk's longtime friend, Sergey Brin.

However, there's more to the 33-year-old than just being the estranged wife of a business magnate.

  • The lawyer

Shanahan graduated with a law degree in high-technology law, intellectual property and litigation from the Santa Clara University School of Law, according to her LinkedIn profile.

She also received a law degree in exchange, global intellectual property and Chinese law from the National University of Singapore in 2013.

  • The philanthropist

Shanahan is the founder of the Bia-Echo Foundation, which has given $100 million to social programs focused on efforts like improving the criminal justice system and climate change, according to Business Insider.

  • The founder

In addition to the Bia-Echo Foundation, Shanahan also founded ClearAccessIP, a Palo Alto, California-based legal tech company that helps patent owners manage and monetize their intellectual property rights.

  • The academic

The California-based lawyer is also an academic fellow of CodeX, or the Stanford Center for Legal Informatics, a center jointly operated by Stanford Law School and the Stanford Computer Science Department.

There, Shanahan launched the Smart Prosecution project, which her CodeX profile described as "a multi-disciplinary effort applying data science to the prosecutorial process, involving partnerships with district attorneys and community organizations."

  • The Democrat

Shanahan is a supporter of left-leaning organizations and Democratic political candidates, The Straits Times reported.

  • The divorcee

Prior to meeting Brin at a yoga retreat in 2015, Shanahan was married to a finance executive, The Wall Street Journal reported.

She and Brin were first spotted together at the wedding of Alexandra Chong, the CEO of the now-defunct dating app Lulu.

  • The struggling mother

Shanahan struggled to get pregnant in her 30s, and she spoke about her fertility problems in a speech at the launch of the Center for Female Reproductive Longevity and Equality in 2019, a report by the New York Post's Page Six said.

"Like many women who are not quite ready to start a family in their early 30s, I decided, or so I thought at the time, to take matters into my own hands and freeze embryos. However, after three failed attempts at embryo-making and three dozen visits to in vitro fertilization clinics around the Bay Area, I learned that I was not nearly as unshakable as I thought I was," Shanahan said.

Despite her struggles, Shanahan and Brin were able to welcome a daughter in 2018.

  • The focused parent

Commenting on her recent divorce filing, Shanahan told news website Puck this month: "I hope for Sergey and I to move forward with dignity, honesty and harmony for the sake of our child. And we are both working towards that."

Sergey Brin co-founded Google with Larry Page in 1998 and now has a net worth of US$86.5 billion

Sergey Brin co-founded Google with Larry Page in 1998 and now has a net worth of US$86.5 billion Photo: GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / KEVORK DJANSEZIAN