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Ronald Shapiro

Founder
Shapiro Sher

Ronald Shapiro notes the theme of his life, thus far, is he is sort of an accidental guy. “I accidentally became a lawyer,” he said. “Accidentally I became an agent. I fell into things along the way and also ended up falling in love with doing them.”

His career did not begin the way he had planned. “I lost my father when I was in my first year in college,” he said. “I had thought I was going to be in business with him and law school was just a stopping place. It turned out to be a career.”

Beginning as a civil rights attorney desegregating housing in Baltimore, he began doing corporate and securities law to bring in more income to the firm. In 1972, he founded the Baltimore-based law firm Shapiro Sher and was named Maryland State Securities Commissioner, a position he served in until 1974.

He received a fateful call from Baltimore Orioles owner Jerold Hoffberger in 1975 asking him to help Brooks Robinson with some financial and investment trouble. “I helped Brooks and Brooks said ‘Why don’t you help others?’ ” he said. “I had no intention of being a sports agent. I just wanted to help people stay out of financial trouble because the money was starting to get big in sports.”

The call lead to a more than 40-year career as an agent representing baseball legends such as Cal Ripken Jr. and Eddie Murray through his sports management firm Shapiro, Robinson & Associates.

A respected negotiator who helped settle the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra strike, he also founded the Shapiro Negotiations Institute, a seminar and consulting firm and Shapiro Advisors LLC, a negotiation deal coaching and consulting firm.

He is driven by a love of people.

“I probably have spent as much time in the nonprofit world working on community causes as I have in the corporate sports world,” he said. “Each of those worlds allows me to connect with different kinds of people and help solve problems for them.”

In his office, he has a pillow gifted to him from one of his children reading “We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.”

“Those are words attributed to (Winston) Churchill, but I hope that my life and anything I have done inspired people to think about them,” he said. “We can all go out and make livings but it is how we use that and give back to others that makes a difference in life.”