Stephen Shapiro is a senior advisor at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, a role he has held since December 2020. He is also a New York–area private investor and managing partner of BSR Investments, where he has worked since 2006, focusing on private equity projects and real estate investments, particularly in multi-family and hospitality sectors.
Shapiro has devoted significant time to national and international security issues through the Atlantic Council and Business Executives for National Security (BENS). He has served both organizations as a board director. At the Atlantic Council, he has participated in specialized efforts including the Combatant Command Task Force under General James L. Jones and has taken part in delegations to NATO member states’ ministries of defense and foreign affairs. At the Scowcroft Center, he is engaged with the Transatlantic Security Initiative.
Shapiro has been a member of BENS for more than thirty-five years. During this period, he traveled to sensitive regions in support of four Supreme Allied Commanders Europe. From 2014 to 2015, he chaired BENS’s Task Force on Domestic Intelligence Reform and was principal author of the 2015 report Domestic Security: Confronting a Changing Threat to Ensure Public Safety and Civil Liberties, which informed work at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
He earned a BA in Politics from Brandeis University in 1977, graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, and received his JD from Columbia Law School in 1981, where he was a Stone Scholar with honors in international law.