Rob Shapiro

Rob Shapiro recently retired as a partner at Ropes & Gray LLP, after more than forty years of advising clients on estate and gift planning, serving as trustee of client trusts, heading the firm’s Private Client Group, and chairing its trust committee. Most recently Rob served as founding CEO of Ropes Wealth Advisors LLC, a wealth management registered advisory firm and affiliate of Ropes & Gray. Throughout his career, Rob has been involved with education and arts organizations. 

At Harvard, Rob has served as a member and vice chair of the Board of Overseers, and as president of the Harvard Alumni Association and Harvard Law School Association. He was one of three Overseer members of the joint committee with the Harvard Corporation to review Harvard’s governance structure during Drew Faust’s presidency; and he served on twelve Visiting Committees to FAS departments and other schools and units of the University.  Rob has also been a trustee of Phillips Exeter Academy and of Noble and Greenough School. 

Since the early 1990s, Rob has been a trustee of the Peabody Essex Museum, serving as president of the board for fifteen years. Currently Rob is chair of the board of governors of the Handel and Haydn Society in Boston.  Rob began his career as an English teacher at Nobles, after a postgraduate fellowship year from Harvard to Trinity College, Cambridge University.  He then attended Harvard Law School and clerked for a federal judge before joining Ropes & Gray.