Nima Shirazi
Vice President
Nima Shirazi is a communications and program strategist with over two decades of eclectic experience working at the intersection of culture and politics, media and narrative, advocacy and the arts.
A senior leader in Spitfire’s New York office, Nima develops strategy, campaigns and messages alongside fearless partners dedicated to dismantling systems of discrimination and disinformation; redistributing power from corporations to communities; and demanding that our environment and economy are abundant and shared. Nima has trained foundation and nonprofit communications professionals across the country in storytelling, messaging and narrative.
He has led presentations at the PolicyLink Equity Summit, Narrative Power Summit, frank gathering and multiple Communications Network conferences. Nima has also moderated discussions and been featured on panels on the media, power, pop culture and disinformation at Cornell University, Northwestern University, Orange County Art Museum and the Museum of the Moving Image in New York City.
Prior to joining Spitfire, Nima was a senior fellow and founding member of the Narrative Initiative, a training and network-building start-up designed to equip leaders and their organizations with a better understanding of how deeply-embedded stories and stereotypes shape the common sense, collective consciousness and the unwritten rules of society. Previously, Nima managed communications strategies, media relations, multimedia production and media-related grantmaking for The Atlantic Philanthropies.
Nima is a member of the Radical Communicators Network and the Gulf/2000 Project, an academic forum and online resource service sponsored by the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. A published political and media analyst and former editor-at-large for the digital foreign affairs magazine Muftah, Nima currently co-hosts the Webby-honored podcast “Citations Needed.”
Born and raised in New York City, Nima’s work has traversed the film, music, theater, philanthropic and nonprofit worlds. He graduated from Oberlin College, used to tour the country as a drummer in rock bands and now serves on the board of directors for Proteus Fund.