Media & Communications Corner: Meet Hank Shafran ' Director of Communications at Bingham McCutchen LLP

'Being at Bingham McCutchen during the past 10-plus years has been the most challenging and rewarding time of my career,' says Shafran, a member of IABC, the Counselors Academy of the Public Relations Society of America, a former vice president and board member of the PRSA Boston chapter, and a member of the Publicity Club of New England, that awarded him the Crystal Bell Award for lifetime achievement in and contributions to the public relations profession in 2001.

The route to law firm PR was a circuitous one for Shafran, who began his career at Burson-Marsteller in New York. From there, he became executive assistant to the director of the Governor's Committee on Criminal Justice and director of advertising and public relations at the country's leading manufacturer of computer systems for libraries. He was also deputy commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Commerce, where he developed the 'Spirit of Massachusetts' campaign to promote the state as a business-friendly tourist destination. Prior to that, he was vice president and director of public relations at Arnold Communications, New England's largest advertising agency. He then spent more than 7 years as Executive Vice President/Partner at Cone Communications, where he developed communications programs for the Boston Stock Exchange, McDonald's, Reebok International, The Dana Farber Cancer Institute, and others. Shafran brought Bingham McCutchen, then known as Bingham Dana & Gould, into Cone Communications as a client in 1987, and firm Chairman Jay Zimmerman asked him to come in-house in 1995.