Margot Lee Shetterly was born in Hampton, Virginia in 1969. She is an American nonfiction writer who has worked in investment banking and media startups alongside her writing career. Shetterly is best known for her debut book Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Who Helped Win the Space Race, published in 2016. The book documents the contributions of African-American women mathematicians at NASA who played instrumental roles in the success of the United States space program. The book's popularity led to film rights being sold while Shetterly was still writing it, resulting in a feature film adaptation released the same year. For several years, Shetterly and her husband lived and worked in Mexico, where they founded and published Inside Mexico, a magazine aimed at English-speaking readers.