BEFORE her apparent affair with billionaire Elon Musk, Nicole Shanahan spoke publicly about her battle with depression and her struggles getting pregnant.
As details about the reported tryst continue to emerge, interviews give an insight into the life of Google co-founder Sergey Brin’s wife.
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News of the purported affair between Shanahan and Musk was revealed in a Wall Street Journal report that claims the dalliance prompted Brin, 48, to file for divorce earlier this year, ending a long friendship between the tech billionaires.
Since the Wall Street Journal published its report Musk has denied the affair occurred.
“This is total bs. Sergey and I are friends and were at a party together last night!” Musk wrote in a tweet responding to a post about the story.
“I’ve only seen Nicole twice in three years, both times with many other people around. Nothing romantic.”
In recent years, Shanahan spoke publicly about ongoing struggles in her life behind the scenes.
A tech founder in her own right, the business woman opened up previously about a sexual assault that occurred in her twenties when she was working as a lawyer.
According to a 2021 interview with San Francisco Magazine, a colleague at her former employer RPX Corporation sexually assaulted her while at work.
“It wasn’t until the #MeToo movement that I felt comfortable discussing this,” she told the magazine.
“But while I was at this job a male co-worker sexually assaulted me one evening while we were working on a project.”
The young up and coming future business mogul says the colleague continue to excel at the company after the sexual assault.
“Because the company at the time was all male led, and this co-worker was highly regarded by the management, he continued to advance more quickly than I did, even though I was the one doing most of the work on our projects,” she said.
But while the colleague who sexually assaulted her was excelling, Shanahan dealt with mental health issues in the aftermath.
According to San Francisco Magazine, Shanahan “developed severe depression” and ultimately left her job and the company.
“It was a real low point in my life, and I was devastated to lose faith in my law career, which I had worked so hard for,” she said.
Speaking with the magazine she also opened up about problems she had getting pregnant.
That experience, she says, helped spark her interest in “reproductive longevity” which is a major pillar of the foundation she runs called Bia-Echo.
Brin filed for divorce from Nicole Shanahan in January this year, citing “irreconcilable differences,” court records show.