Author: William Shutkin

William Shutkin

A global leader in sustainability and social enterprise, William Shutkin is a sustainable developer based in Boulder, Colorado, where he is partnering with Zocalo Community Development to lead the development of two green, 300+-unit mixed-income, mixed-use projects, one on 15 acres on Arapahoe Avenue in East Boulder, the other at 30th and Pearl in Boulder Junction. He also worked with Zocalo on 2020 Lawrence in Denver, a 231-unit multi-family, mixed-use, LEED-Gold certified project completed in 2013. In 2011, William was a consultant to Karlin Real Estate and Shears Adkins Rockmore on PearlWest, helping formulate the initial project concept (“Wilderness City”) and supporting the early entitlement process for this LEED-Platinum, mixed-use building in downtown Boulder.

William cofounded the Boston-based environmental justice law center, Alternatives for Community & Environment, in 1993 as an Echoing Green Fellow, and later New Ecology, Inc., the pioneering sustainable urban development research and consulting organization in Boston with offices in four states. NEI made the first business case for greening low-income housing, the landmark 2003 report “The Costs and Benefits of Green Affordable Housing,” and launched Wegowise, a best-in-class online tool for energy and water conservation in multifamily buildings. From 2011-2016, William was president of Presidio Graduate School in San Francisco, one of the world’s leading sustainable management programs. He was also a professor of urban planning and environmental policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and chair in sustainable real estate at the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado Boulder. William has lectured around the world on sustainability, cities and social change and has been featured in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, U.S. News & World Report and on National Public Radio. He is the author of the award-winning book, The Land That Could Be: Environmentalism and Democracy in the Twenty-First Century, and A Republic of Trees: Field Notes on People, Place, and the Planet.