William McDonough is a globally recognized leader in sustainable design and development. He has written and lectured extensively on design as the first signal of human intention. He co-authored Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things (2002), widely recognized as a seminal text of both the sustainability and the Circular Economy design movements. 

He advises global leaders through McDonough Innovation, is an architect with William McDonough + Partners and provides counsel through MBDC, the creators of the Cradle to Cradle Certified™ Products Program. He works at multiple scales from packaging, products and buildings to city plans.

He has been active with the World Economic Forum for 25 years and served as the inaugural chair of their Meta-Council on the Circular Economy. McDonough has advised senior leadership at companies such as Google, Ford Motor Company, Starbucks, Unilever and Walmart. 

McDonough articulated a New Language for Carbon in the journal Nature as “Carbon Is Not The Enemy” (2016). The article which calls for the distinction between living, durable and fugitive carbon has been used as the basis for new discussions on carbon management leading to climate change solutions. He is now working to actively define the Circular Carbon Economy which serves as a framework for developing and effective carbon management. He was invited to present the Circular Carbon Economy at the COP25 and at the BBVA Foundation in December 2019 and keynoted the energy and climate opening workshops for the G20 in Riyadh in March 2020.   

McDonough is a graduate of Dartmouth College (B.A.) and Yale University (M.Arch.). He is a Distinguished Research Professor at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) focused on Circular Carbon Economy. He has been on the faculty of Stanford University since 2004 and served as the A.D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University (1999-2004) and Dean of the School of Architecture and the Edward E. Elson Endowed Chair at the University of Virginia (1994-1999).

McDonough received the Presidential Award for Sustainable Development (1996), the first U.S. EPA Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award (2003), the National Design Award (2004) and the Fortune Award for Circular Economy Leadership (2017). Time magazine recognized him as a “Hero for the Planet,” noting: “His utopianism is grounded in a unified philosophy that—in demonstrable and practical ways—is changing the design of the world," and in 2019 Fortune magazine named him one of the World's 50 Greatest Leaders.