Stephen Shapiro is a senior advisor at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and a New York-area private investor. He devotes much of his time to national and international security through the Atlantic Council and Business Executives for National Security (BENS), amongst other organizations, where he served both organizations as a Board Director.

At the Atlantic Council he has worked on specialized panels such as the Combatant Command Task Force under General James L. Jones, and he has served on delegations to NATO member states’ ministries of defense and foreign affairs. At the Scowcroft Center he is engaged with its Transatlantic Security Initiative.

While at BENS, where Shapiro has been a member for more than thirty-five years, he traveled through delicate areas of the world in support of four Supreme Allied Commanders for Europe. As chair of the Task Force on Domestic Intelligence Reform at BENS, he was principal author of its seminal 2015 study Domestic Security: Confronting a Changing Threat to Ensure Public Safety and Civil Liberties, which had impact at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Homeland Security, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Shapiro also authored national security publications while he chaired the New York City Bar Association’s Committee on Military Affairs and its Committee on International Security Affairs,including the report Inter Arma Silent Leges: In Times of Armed Conflict, Should the Laws be Silent?, which was included in the book The Imperial Presidency and the Consequences of 9/11 edited by James Silkenat and Mark Shulman; and The Combat Exclusion Laws, An Idea Whose Time Has Gone, which assisted the US Congress in eliminating the laws excluding women from combat roles.

He earned his BA from Brandeis University, Phi Beta Kappa, and his JD from Columbia Law School with Honors in its international law program.