BEN SHIELDS
Ben Shields
Senior Lecturer MIT Sloan School of Management Ben Shields is a Senior Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management. His work as a teacher, researcher, and practitioner focuses on digital transformation in the sports, media, and entertainment industries. He is the author or coauthor of three books, Social Media Management: Persuasion in Networked Culture (Oxford University Press, 2016), The Sports Strategist: Developing Leaders for a High Performance Industry (Oxford University Press, 2015), and The Elusive Fan: Reinventing Sports in a Crowded Marketplace (McGraw-Hill, 2006). He teaches a number of courses in the graduate programs at MIT Sloan, including Social Media Management, Sports Strategy and Analytics, Communication for Leaders, and Sloan Fellows Seminar on Leadership. Shields also teaches in the MIT Sloan Executive Education program. He is the Faculty Director of two programs: the Formula 1 Extreme Innovation Series and the Global Executive Academy. He also serves as the CoFaculty Director of the LEAD20@MIT program with the Ruderman Family Foundation. In addition, he created and teaches the open enrollment program Analytics Management: Business Lessons from the Sports Data Revolution and the self-paced online program Management Analytics: Decision-Making Lessons from the Sports Industry. Shields also teaches in two other open enrollment programs: Communication and Persuasion in the Digital Age and Maximizing Your Personal Productivity. His other work at MIT includes co-hosting “Counterpoints,” the sports analytics podcast from the MIT Sloan Management Review, and teaching in the MIT Sports Entrepreneurship Bootcamp program, which is offered through MIT’s Office of Open Learning. Prior to MIT, Shields served as the Director of Social Media and Marketing at ESPN. He oversaw social media strategy for the ESPN brand and collaborated across the enterprise to develop and implement company-wide social strategy. He also worked on marketing strategy for several ESPN brands and sub-brands, including the SportsCenter “DaDaDa” campaign and the Emmy Award-winning “It’s Not Crazy, It’s Sports” brand campaign. Shields holds a BS and MA in communication studies and a PhD in media, technology, and society, all from Northwestern University. |