Joan Shafran - Board Co-Chair
Joan Shafran is a Managing Partner of Powell Partners, a family real estate investment company which specializes in commercial and residential real estate. Currently she is part of a Family Office in Cleveland, OH, where she serves on both the Executive and Investment Committees. She was formally the Executive Managing Partner of the Berimore Company, also a real estate Investment Co. From 1996 until 2011 she served 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 media. 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. She has also 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 served on the Board of Goddard College, in Plainfield, Vermont, from 1999 until 2011, including as Chair from 2007 to 2010. In addition, she has served on the Advisory Board of the University of Massachusetts College of Nursing and Health Arts Sciences, and Brown/Flynn, a corporate responsibility and sustainability consulting firm based in Cleveland, Ohio.