Shannon Sanders McDonald is a practicing architect, and author of The Parking Garage: Design and Evolution of a Modern Urban Form. The book was the basis for an exhibit "House of Cars" at the National Building Museum. McDonald is a graduate of the Yale School of Architecture, where she was awarded a Business and Professional Women’s Scholarship. She is an assistant professor of architecture at Southern Illinois University.
Ms. McDonald has written numerous articles on various aspects of parking, architecture, planning, energy, sustainability, the environment, and transportation.She has given presentations at the meetings of a number of organizations, including the Library of Congress, The National Building Museum, The Congress for New Urbanism, Advanced Transit Association, The American Institute of Architects, Smithsonian and the National Transportation Research Board.