William Shutkin, Principal
Until the summer of 2016, I spent the first 25 years of my career in the non-profit sector, advocating, teaching, lawyering, writing and entrepreneuring for social change and sustainable, equitable communities.
When I turned 50, I pledged to myself that, if and when the opportunity arose, and with sustainability now more or less mainstream, I would try my hand at the for-profit world, take what I have learned and taught and apply it as a sustainable real estate developer, believing this is no oxymoron but instead, given the state of things, a mandate, a call to action. Words into deeds, like the other organizations I’ve founded, but this time with an equity stake. That’s how Shutkin Sustainable Living came to be.
Biography
Social entrepreneur, executive, attorney and educator, William Shutkin has been at the forefront of the urban sustainability field for over three decades. David Brower, the father of the modern environmental movement, described him as “an environmental visionary creating solutions to today’s problems with a passion that would make John Muir and Martin Luther King equally proud.”
Shutkin is Teaching Professor and Faculty Director in the Masters of the Environment program at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he leads the Urban Resilience and Sustainability specialization. He is also Co-host of The Sustainable City Podcast and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Climate Resilience and Climate Justice, with MIT Press.
Shutkin is principal of Shutkin Sustainable Living, a social impact development practice in Boulder, Colorado, focused on green, mixed-use, mixed-income infill development in select U.S. cities. To date, SSL has helped deliver over $240MM in development projects, including 200 permanently-affordable housing units and one of the nation’s first permanently-affordable commercial space programs for small businesses and non-profits.
From 2011 to 2016, Shutkin was President and CEO and Richard M. Gray Fellow in Sustainability Practice at Presidio Graduate School in San Francisco. Prior to Presidio, he was on the faculty of the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, where he was Director of the Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute, and was inaugural Chair in sustainable real estate at the University of Colorado Boulder Leeds School of Business. From 1999-2009, Shutkin was a faculty member in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT and, from 1993-2004, taught at Boston College Law School.
Shutkin cofounded the Boston-based environmental justice law center, Alternatives for Community & Environment, in 1993 as an Echoing Green Fellow. In 1999, he founded New Ecology, Inc., also in Boston, which today has over 50 staff with offices in three Northeastern 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, in partnership with Boston Community Capital, created Wegowise, a best-in-class utility data management and analytics software for multifamily real estate. Wegowise was acquired by Measurabl, the world’s most widely adopted ESG technology solution for real estate. From 2004-2006, Shutkin was President and CEO of the Orton Family Foundation, an operating foundation in Boulder and Vermont with an urban sustainability and technology development mission, including CommunityViz, a novel 3D decision-support software tool for sustainable community planning.
Shutkin has been featured in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, U.S. News & World Report and on National Public Radio, as well as in the book Eco-Pioneers: Practical Visionaries Solving Today’s Environmental Problems. He is the author of The Land That Could Be: Environmentalism and Democracy in the Twenty-First Century, which won an American Political Science Association Best Book Award and was a Time Magazine Green Century Recommended Book, and A Republic of Trees: Field Notes on People, Place and the Planet. He received an AB in History and Classics from Brown University and a JD and MA in History from the University of Virginia. He also completed PhD studies in legal history as a Regents Fellow at the University of California Berkeley and attended the Executive Program in Business Strategies for Environmental Sustainability at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Shutkin was a law clerk for U.S. District Court Chief Judge Franklin S. Billings, Jr. He is an avid telemark skier, trail runner, hiker and musician, and a published poet.
Maria McDonald, Senior Associate
Maria McDonald is a sustainability professional on a mission to transform business models to prioritize people and the planet alongside profit. Maria has a background in helping small and medium-sized businesses achieve innovative sustainability goals, from consumer products to real estate development.
From 2017-2023, Maria was the Sustainability Manager and then Director of Sustainability for United By Blue, leading their entire sustainability footprint, including B Corp certification and product sustainability, and their one-for-one business model. She has also consulted for businesses of all sizes on cutting-edge sustainability plans through her private consulting practice and with a leading sustainability consultancy, the Anthesis Group. She is well versed in sustainable business tactics, such as B Corp certifications, sustainability reporting metrics, product and supply chain management, climate target setting, impact reporting, and sustainability communications.
She holds a Bachelor of Science from Georgetown University and a Masters in Sustainability Planning and Management from the University of Colorado Boulder. Maria resides in Boulder, CO, and enjoys hiking, camping, and music.