Dr. Shankar is a physician with a passion for gender justice, intersectional feminism, reproductive and mental health, and health equity. She is a graduate of the UCSF Pediatric Leaders for the Underserved Residency Program and also is the co-founder of the award-winning organization called Girls Health Champions which fights gender bias by training youth globally as gender and health peer educators. She was a former Fulbright-Nehru Scholar to India from 2009 to 2010 and a Fogarty-NIH fellow from 2020 to 2022 where she focused on global adolescent health.

Currently, she is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital Oakland's Federally Qualified Health Center in teen, school-based health, and primary care. She is also a faculty member with the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health.