Shirley was appointed Head of International Relations and Outreach Programmes for Cambridge Enterprise Limited, the commercialisation office of the University of Cambridge in January 2018. Prior to this, she was Head of Marketing and Communiations for over ten years at Cambridge Enterprise. She retired from Cambridge Enterprise in 2020.
Shirley has extensive experience of start-up companies from her experience of working for more than 15 years in executive research, initially for Egon Zehnder International as a researcher and then for six years she was Managing Director of Scientific Resources, part of the Generics Group. During the mid-1990s she ran her own consultancy firm specialising in senior appointments for technology-based companies. In 2002 she was the Cambridge Evening News ‘Business Woman of the Year’. Shirley was a governor of Anglia Ruskin University until 2012 and has been the Chair of Trustees at Cambridge Meridian Academies Trust (CMAT) for ten years. Shirley was Chair of Trustees at Meridian Trust until August 2026. She is now a Member of the Board of Trustees.