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Spring Registration Opens Feb 23
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COM 66 — Think on Your Feet: An Improviser’s Guide to Business and Communication

Quarter: Spring
Instructor(s): Debra Schifrin, Daniel Schifrin
Duration: 2 days
Location: On-campus
Date(s): Apr 11—Apr 12
Class Recording Available: No
Class Meeting Day: Saturday and Sunday
 
Class Meeting Time: 10:00 am—4:00 pm (PT)
Tuition: $450
   
Refund Deadline: Apr 4
 
Unit(s): 1
   
Enrollment Limit: 26
  
Status: Registration opens Feb 23, 8:30 am (PT)
 
Quarter: Spring
Day: Saturday and Sunday
Duration: 2 days
Time: 10:00 am—4:00 pm (PT)
Date(s): Apr 11—Apr 12
Unit(s): 1
Location: On-campus
 
Tuition: $450
 
Refund Deadline: Apr 4
 
Instructor(s): Debra Schifrin, Daniel Schifrin
 
Enrollment Limit: 26
 
Recording Available: No
 
Status: Registration opens Feb 23, 8:30 am (PT)
 
 
The skill of thinking on your feet is no longer optional in today’s workplace—it’s essential. In this interactive, improvisation-based communication course, you’ll learn to handle the unexpected with calm, confidence, inclusiveness, and humor. You’ll increase your agility, grow your confidence in unpredictable situations, and learn critical new skills and mindsets. These include being more present and open to surprising ideas; cultivating a mindset of curiosity; and engaging with your audience with energy, commitment, and delight. Whether you are in front of an audience of one or 800, you will learn how to prevent missteps and imperfections from derailing you. The course reveals how spontaneity and play make communication joyful and how humor can transform connection. Class sessions include interactive activities in pairs and small groups, targeted debriefs, discussions, and mini-lectures. In a supportive, encouraging environment, you’ll practice techniques that strengthen intuition, enhance presence, and build authentic connection—helping you become a stronger, more confident, and more creative communicator.

This course is not a theater-performance course; no theater or improv experience is necessary.

DEBRA SCHIFRIN
Lecturer, Stanford Graduate School of Business

Debra Schifrin is a corporate consultant and lecturer in management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where she created the school’s first and only improv-based MBA leadership course, "Spontaneous Management." As the founder of Debra Schifrin Consulting, she designs and leads innovative, improv-based training sessions for businesses on leadership, communications, collaboration, and storytelling. Her clients come from multiple sectors, including AI, tech, consulting, medicine, educational technology, consumer goods, and finance.

DANIEL SCHIFRIN
Founder, StoryForward

Daniel Schifrin, through his consulting firm StoryForward, has worked with numerous teams across the corporate and organizational landscape to sharpen and amplify their messages. He has taught creative writing at UC Berkeley, SF State, and Stanford Continuing Studies. His fiction and essays have appeared in The Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, McSweeney's, and elsewhere. An award-winning fiction writer and playwright, his collection of literary essays, Here You Are, is forthcoming.