Shira Springer is a Senior Lecturer in Managerial Communication at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Her teaching, writing, and research focus on storytelling, leadership communication, and strategy in the entertainment, media, and sports industries.
She teaches several courses in the graduate programs at MIT Sloan. She co-developed and co-teaches Entertainment, Media, and Sports Lab. In addition, she teaches the MBA core course Communication for Leaders and the MBA elective Advanced Leadership Communication, and she created and teaches multiple storytelling intensives. Shira also teaches in the MIT Sloan Executive Education program. She developed and teaches the open enrollment course Leading Through Storytelling: The Human Advantage in the Age of AI.
Prior to MIT, Shira was a journalist. She covered sports for The Boston Globe, multiple NPR programs, and NPR affiliate WBUR. She reported on men’s and women’s professional leagues and major competitions, including the NBA Finals, Super Bowl, World Series, Stanley Cup Playoffs, FIFA Women’s World Cup, and the Winter and Summer Olympics. She spent seven years as the Boston Celtics beat writer for the Globe, traveling around the country covering the team and NBA. Her features and columns have also appeared in a variety of other publications, including The New York Times and Sports Business Journal.
As a Globe staff writer, Shira reported extensively on the Boston Marathon bombings and was part of the team that won the paper’s 2014 Pulitzer Prize for that coverage. She's also earned national recognition and awards for her investigative journalism, feature writing, radio storytelling, and media criticism.
Shira's essays have been published 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 coauthored MIT Sloan case studies on the National Women’s Soccer League and Athletes Unlimited.
She holds an AB from Harvard University in social studies and an MBA from Boston University.
