Joan Shafran is Executive Managing Partner of the Berimore Company, and Managing Partner of Powell Partners. Both are real estate investment companies specializing in commercial and residential real estate, primarily in the Midwest. Since 1996 she has also been on the Board of Directors of Forest City Enterprises, a publicly traded real estate company.

Prior to 1992, Joan worked for 17 years as an artist and designer, exploring computer-based book making and animation. She is a 1980 graduate of the Visual Studies program at MIT (now the Media Lab), where she continued to work and teach until 1989. In addition, she has taught at the Boston Museum School, Rhode Island School of Design and Massachusetts College of Art.

In 1986 she helped found Do While Studio, an art and technology studio, which offered residencies for artists as well as technology-based community outreach.

Joan has been on the Board of Goddard College, in Plainfield, Vermont, since 1999, and served as chair from 2007 to 2010. She is on the Advisory Board of the University of Massachusetts College of Nursing and Health Arts Sciences in Boston, Massachusetts, and is a member of the Board of Advisors of Brown/Flynn, a corporate responsibility and sustainability consulting firm based in Cleveland, Ohio.