William McDonough is co-founder of the Cradle-to-Cradle principle together with Michael Braungart. He is a renowned architect and designer and has been a leader in the sustainable development movement since its inception He is co-founder of McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry (MBDC) which employs a comprehensive Cradle to Cradle design protocol to chemical benchmarking, supply-chain integration, energy and materials assessment, clean-production qualification, and sustainability issue management and optimization.

Mr McDonough and  Michael Braungart co-authored Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things (North Point Press, 2002), which has now been published in German, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, and Korean translations, and soon will be available in Dutch.The two were also the subject of a 2006 documentary  "Wast equals food", made and broadcasted by the Dutch broadcasting company, VPRO television. A documentary that set off a lot of Cradle-to-Cradle initiatives in the Netherlands.

Mr. McDonough was commissioned in 1991 by the City of Hannover to write The Hannover Principles: Design for Sustainability, the official design guidelines for the 2000 World's Fair, which the City presented to the 1992 U.N. Earth Summit in Brazil.

He is winner of three U.S. presidential awards: the Presidential Award for Sustainable Development (1996), the National Design Award (2004); and the Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award (2003).

Mr. McDonough is also a Consulting Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University, U.S. Chair of the Board of Councilors of the China-U.S. Center for Sustainable Development, From 1994-1999, Mr. McDonough was the Edward E. Elson Professor of Architecture and Dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia.