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Fall Registration Opens Aug 17
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COM 66 — Think on Your Feet: An Improviser’s Guide to Business and Communication

Quarter: Fall
Instructor(s): Debra Schifrin, Daniel Schifrin
Duration: 2 days
Location: On-campus
Date(s): Nov 7—Nov 8
Class Recording Available: No
Class Meeting Day: Saturday and Sunday
 
Class Meeting Time: 10:00 am—4:00 pm (PT)
Tuition: $470
   
Refund Deadline: Oct 31
 
Unit(s): 1
   
Enrollment Limit: 26
  
Status: Registration opens Aug 17, 8:30 am (PT)
 
Quarter: Fall
Day: Saturday and Sunday
Duration: 2 days
Time: 10:00 am—4:00 pm (PT)
Date(s): Nov 7—Nov 8
Unit(s): 1
Location: On-campus
 
Tuition: $470
 
Refund Deadline: Oct 31
 
Instructor(s): Debra Schifrin, Daniel Schifrin
 
Enrollment Limit: 26
 
Recording Available: No
 
Status: Registration opens Aug 17, 8:30 am (PT)
 
 
Thinking on your feet is now mandatory in the workplace. In this interactive, improvisation-based communication course, you will learn skills for handling the unexpected with calm, grace, inclusiveness, and humor. You will increase your agility and grow your confidence in unpredictable situations while adopting critical mindsets. These include being present and open to surprising ideas, cultivating curiosity, and engaging your audience with energy and commitment. Whether addressing one person or 800, you will learn to prevent missteps from derailing you. The course will show how spontaneity can be joyful and how play and humor create authentic connections with your audience. Expect a blend of activities in pairs and small groups, targeted debriefs, discussions, and mini-lectures. By practicing these techniques in a supportive environment, you will emerge as a stronger, more intuitive 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. As the founder of Debra Schifrin Consulting, she designs 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. Formerly an NPR reporter, she is an experienced improv teacher and performer.

DANIEL SCHIFRIN
Founder, StoryForward

Daniel Schifrin has taught both creative writing and business communication at Stanford, UC Berkeley, and Santa Clara University. An award-winning journalist, fiction writer, and playwright, his work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and McSweeney's, among other publications. As the founder of StoryForward, he works with creative and technical leaders at places like Google, Apple, UCSF, and Stanford Hospital in the areas of dialogue, conversation design, and collaborative storytelling.