Saul Taylor Shapiro is the New York City franchisee of Fibrenew doing business as Fibrenew Manhattan Central.

Early life and education

Shapiro was born to Florence and

Seymour Shapiro Seymour Lester Shapiro (1916 - 1961) was an organic chemist best known for his pioneering work on a class of drugs used to treat symptoms of adult-onset diabetes. Phenformin was marketed under the name "DBI" until it was taken off the market after ...

Hastings-on-Hudson, New York Hastings-on-Hudson is a village in Westchester County located in the southwestern part of the town of Greenburgh in the state of New York, United States. It is located on the eastern bank of the Hudson River, approximately north of midtown Manha ...

. A materials science engineering graduate of

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

, Shapiro has also received an SM in engineering from

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the mo ...

and an SM in management from the

MIT Sloan School of Management The MIT Sloan School of Management (MIT Sloan or Sloan) is the business school of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT Sloan offers bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree programs, ...

as a Leaders for Manufacturing Fellow (now Leaders for Global Operations program). Both of these degrees from MIT were earned in 1991. He studied

furniture design Furniture refers to movable objects intended to support various human activities such as seating (e.g., stools, chairs, and sofas), eating (tables), storing items, eating and/or working with an item, and sleeping (e.g., beds and hammocks). Fur ...

under

Tage Frid Tage Frid (30 May 1915 – 4 May 2004) was a Danish-born woodworker, educator and author who influenced the development of the studio furniture movement in the United States. His design work was often in the Danish-modern style, best known for h ...

and Hank Gilpin at the

Rhode Island School of Design The Rhode Island School of Design (RISD , pronounced "Riz-D") is a private art and design school in Providence, Rhode Island. The school was founded as a coeducational institution in 1877 by Helen Adelia Rowe Metcalf, who sought to increase the ...

for two semesters and attended Harvard University's

Graduate School of Design The Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) is the graduate school of design at Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It offers master's and doctoral programs in architecture, landscape architecture, urban ...

for the first year of a three year Master's program. In 2009 he self-published "Two Chairs," a brief memoir of his woodworking journey.

Career

From 2008 to 2012, Shapiro served as President of the

Metropolitan Television Alliance The Metropolitan Television Alliance, LLC (MTVA) is a group organized in the wake of the loss of the transmission facilities atop the World Trade Center in 2001. Its mission is to identify, design and build a facility suitable for the long-term requ ...

, LLC (MTVA). The MTVA was formed by the New York area television broadcast stations shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Those attacks completely destroyed New York’s analog and digital over-the-air television broadcast infrastructure. The MTVA’s mission was to coordinate the recovery and the initial rebuilding of that infrastructure at the

Empire State Building The Empire State Building is a 102-story Art Deco skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The building was designed by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon and built from 1930 to 1931. Its name is derived from "Empire State", the nickname of the st ...

, and to locate and develop permanent facilities to replace those lost in 2001. This effort included the relocation of stations to temporary facilities in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, the design and construction of analog and digital facilities at the Empire State Building to meet ongoing broadcast needs, and investigation of the design and construction of the possibility of facilities on top of

One World Trade Center One World Trade Center (also known as One World Trade, One WTC, and formerly Freedom Tower) is the main building of the rebuilt World Trade Center complex in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Designed by David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Mer ...

(the Freedom Tower). In addition, the MTVA investigated methods to further enhance over-the-air digital signals originating from the Empire State Building facility. This work was funded by a grant administered by the Office of Telecommunications and Information Applications (OTIA) within the National Telecommunications and Infrastructure Administration (NTIA), an office of the

Department of Commerce The United States Department of Commerce is an executive department of the U.S. federal government concerned with creating the conditions for economic growth and opportunity. Among its tasks are gathering economic and demographic data for bu ...

. Previously Shapiro served four years as Vice President of the

New York City Economic Development Corporation New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) is a nonprofit corporation whose stated mission is to "leverage the city’s assets to create beneficial jobs that drive growth. This ensures equitable and sustainable development across al ...

, covering the Media and Telecommunications sectors. He was responsible for attracting investment and expansion of domestic and international companies to NYC, and to serve as an advocate for companies and industries in their dealings with city government. Shapiro joined the EDC with experience stretching across both electronic media and telecommunications services and technology, including

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...

, the

FCC The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdiction ...

ABC Television Network The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) is an American commercial broadcast television network. It is the flagship property of the ABC Entertainment Group division of The Walt Disney Company. The network is headquartered in Burbank, Califor ...

and the Internet. At

Sony Corporation of America Sony Corporation of America (SONAM, also known as SCA), is the American arm of the Japanese conglomerate Sony Group Corporation SONAM, headquartered in New York City, manages the company's US-based businesses. Sony's principal U.S. businesse ...

he served as Vice President of Broadband Services, responsible for new business opportunities based on emerging technologies and standards, with particular focus on the strategic integration of Sony’s US e-business initiatives. Shapiro was COO at

Gist Communications In computing, GiST or Generalized Search Tree, is a data structure and API that can be used to build a variety of disk-based search trees. GiST is a generalization of the B+ tree, providing a concurrent and recoverable height-balanced search tree ...

, then the leading independent online provider of TV listings and editorial, from 1999 to 2001. He helped redirect the company’s efforts to developing on-screen interactive applications for a variety of set-top platforms. Shapiro joined Gist from ABC Television where, as Vice President, Broadcast Technology, he was responsible for developing strategic technical initiatives and the network’s transition to

digital television Digital television (DTV) is the transmission of television signals using digital encoding, in contrast to the earlier analog television technology which used analog signals. At the time of its development it was considered an innovative advanc ...

broadcast technology. Shapiro came to ABC after serving as Assistant Bureau Chief for Technology Policy in the

Mass Media Bureau Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different elementar ...

of the

Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdiction ...

. While at the FCC, Mr. Shapiro led a team of engineers, economists and lawyers in drafting Rulemakings and Orders for the introduction of

to the US broadcast market. He also acted as policy advisor to the Chairman on technological developments and trends in digital media, as well as topics related to the convergence of communications technologies.McConnell, Chris, "The Low-Down on High Definition," Broadcasting and Cable Magazine, April 17, 1996 Vol 126, No. 17, p20 Prior to joining the FCC, Shapiro was Director of New Business Development with

responsible for identifying new opportunities for Sony’s Television Business Group in the then emerging digital era. Prior to entering the broadcast television business, he was a microelectronics process development engineer for a variety of firms in the Boston area.

References

External links

Fibrenew
{{DEFAULTSORT:Shapiro, Saul MIT Sloan School of Management alumni Brown University School of Engineering alumni American Broadcasting Company executives People from Hastings-on-Hudson, New York People from Dobbs Ferry, New York Living people Year of birth missing (living people)