Policy, Technology, and Carbon Free Cities

William Shutkin serves as the Faculty Director and Teaching Professor in the Masters of the Environment program at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he leads the Urban Resilience and Sustainability specialization. With a robust background in environmental policy and sustainable development, he is also the Co-host of The Sustainable City Podcast and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Climate Resilience and Climate Justice published by MIT Press. Shutkin is the principal of Shutkin Sustainable Living, a social impact developer focused on green, mixed-use, mixed-income developments, having successfully delivered over $240 million in projects that include affordable housing and commercial space for small businesses.Before his tenure at CU Boulder, Shutkin held significant positions such as President and CEO at Presidio Graduate School and faculty member at institutions like MIT and Boston College Law School. He co-founded several influential organizations, including New Ecology, Inc., which pioneered initiatives for greening low-income housing. His scholarly contributions include 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. With degrees from Brown University and the University of Virginia, along with PhD studies at UC Berkeley, Shutkin's work continues to impact urban sustainability practices across the United States. Through his courses such as "Climate Resilience and Urban Sustainability" and "Sustainable Cities Case Studies," he equips students with critical skills to address contemporary environmental challenges.