Shelley earned a B.A. in Art History and Neurobiology from Wellesley College and an M.D. from the Chicago Medical School at Rosalind Franklin University. She trained in Surgery at UCSF and Stanford, where she served as Chief Resident and did a fellowship in Advanced Minimally Invasive Surgery at UCSF under Dr. Lawrence Way. She has been a general surgeon for over 20 years, currently with the Palo Alto Medical Foundation and affiliated with Stanford Hospital. Shelley has served as president of the Northern California Chapter of the American College of Surgeons, the San Francisco Surgical Society, as well as the UCSF Naffziger Surgical Society. Shelley’s family legacy at Walker’s includes her mother Virginia Backus Caulkins ’40; two aunts: Barbara Backus Jewett ’31 and Dorothy Backus Lunken ’38; a cousin, Virginia Backus Vanocur ’54 and a godmother, Susan Ford ’63.