Robert Shapiro

Mr. Robert N. Shapiro is a retired partner of Ropes & Gray LLP and retired CEO of Ropes Wealth Advisors LLC. During more than forty years at the firm, based in Boston, Mr. Shapiro advised individuals and families on estate planning, financial planning, and philanthropic planning, and served as head of the Private Client Group and chair of the firm’s trust committee. In the final stage of practice, Mr. Shapiro helped launch the registered investment advisory firm Ropes Wealth Advisors and served as CEO of RWA.

He matriculated at Trinity College in 1972 as the Lt. Charles Henry Fiske III Scholar from Harvard, reading English. He then taught high-school English before attending law school, and then served as judicial clerk to the Hon. Jon O. Newman in the US District Court (Connecticut) and US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. 

Since returning to the Boston area from his studies at Cambridge, Mr. Shapiro Rob has served on (and at various times chaired) the Harvard-Cambridge Scholarships Committee, a program started after World War I which sends four graduating seniors each year from Harvard to Trinity, Emmanuel, Jesus and Pembroke colleges.  At Harvard, he served as a member and vice-chair of the Board of Overseers, president of the Harvard Alumni Association and president of the Harvard Law School Association; he is currently on the Director’s advisory council of the Harvard Art Museums and the Dean’s advisory council of the Harvard Radcliffe Institute. Mr. Shapiro also currently serves on and chairs the board of the Handel and Haydn Society in Boston and is a trustee emeritus and former president of the board of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem. He is a former trustee of Phillips Exeter Academy and of Noble and Greenough School.