Speaker Profile

Shira Springer is a Lecturer in Managerial Communication at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Her teaching and research focus on leadership communication, sports strategy and storytelling. She is also a columnist, essayist and feature writer. Her work appears in a variety of publications, including the Sports Business Journal and The New York Times. Her writing often addresses issues at the intersection of sports and culture, especially women’s sports and gender inequity.

Her essays have appeared in The New York Times best seller “Upon Further Review: The Greatest What-Ifs in Sports History” (Hachette, 2018) and “Our Boston: Writers Celebrate the City They Love” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013). She’s also co-authored MIT Sloan case studies on the National Women’s Soccer League and Athletes Unlimited.

She teaches the MBA core course Communication for Leaders and the MBA elective Advanced Leadership Communication. She also teaches storytelling in a variety of MIT Sloan Executive Education programs. 

Prior to MIT, Shira covered sports for The Boston Globe, multiple NPR programs, and NPR affiliate WBUR. She reported on all four major Boston professional teams, the NBA Finals, World Series, Super Bowl, Stanley Cup Final, and the Winter and Summer Olympics, and she served as the Globe’s Celtics beat writer for seven years. As a Globe staff writer, she also reported extensively on the Boston Marathon bombings and shared in the paper’s 2014 Pulitzer Prize for that coverage. Additionally, she’s earned national recognition and awards for her investigative journalism, feature writing, audio storytelling and media criticism.