Overview

Gender

male

Investor Type

Investment Partner

Robert Shapiro is Co-Founder and Managing Director of Sandbox Industries, a development firm that creates, launches and manages new business concepts. Sandbox Industries also manages venture funds, including the BlueCross BlueShield Venture Partners fund.

He was formerly Chairman and CEO of Monsanto Company. Upon the merger of Monsanto with Pharmacia & Upjohn, he served as Chairman of the newly-formed Pharmacia Corporation.

Previously, Robert was President of Monsanto’s Agriculture Group, Chairman and CEO of The NutraSweet Company, a subsidiary of Monsanto, and President of the NutraSweet Group of G.D. Searle & Co., where he previously served as Vice President and General Counsel. Before joining Searle, Robert was Vice President and General Counsel of General Instrument Corporation.

Prior to this, he practiced law in New York City; served in government as Special Assistant to the General Counsel and later to the Undersecretary of the U.S Department of Transportation; and served as a professor of law at Northeastern University in Boston and the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

Robert has served on the boards of the New York Stock Exchange (later NYSE Euronext), Citigroup Inc., Rockwell International, Silicon Graphics Inc., and Sequus Pharmaceuticals. He currently serves as a director of Theranos Inc., Darkstrand Inc., Sapphire Energy Inc., and Elevance Renewable Sciences.

He has also served on the President’s Advisory Committee on Trade Policy, and on the White House Domestic Policy Review of Industrial Innovation. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Robert Shapiro is a 1959 graduate of Harvard College and holds a JD from Columbia University School of Law.