Shirley Gamaroff (Kaplan) grew up in Bloemfontein, South Africa. After graduating from the University of Witwatersrand (B.Sc Maths) in 1966 she came to Israel where she started working as a computer programmer at Tel Aviv University. This was the beginning of a life-long career in various aspects of the software and hi-tec industry including participating in the team that created the Beth Hatefutsoth community, surname and genealogy systems, being in at the beginning of Israeli software exporting, and running her own technical documentation management company.

In recent years she has given courses in technical text editing at Beit Berl College. Shirley is now mostly retired spending half her time in Kfar Saba enjoying her two daughters and four grandchildren, and the other half in France with her French partner.