Shelley began delving in grassroots politics and political fund-raising in the '90s. In 1994, she set her sights on a county Democratic Central Committee seat in the Westside and San Fernando Valley district but was disqualified due to a flu and a signature-gathering technicality (her surrogate signature-gatherer didn't live in the district.) She would receive her MBA from the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) and, in 1997, she formed Shelley Hack Media Consultancy (SHMC,) a media consultancy firm that worked in pre- and post-conflict countries. Starting in Bosnia, where she produced their first ever televised debate, she would go into war-torn countries and help them establish democracy through media. She would later work extensively in Eastern Europe and Western Asia. She also became a member of the non-partisan Pacific Council on International Policy or PCIP, a membership-based international affairs organization bent on understanding international affairs among others. For ten years, she traveled all over the world.
