Full Name
Bill Shireman
Job Title
CEO
Company
Solution Citizen
Speaker Bio
Bill Shireman is a serial social entrepreneur, policy innovator, and conflict mediator who brings together capitalists, activists, conservatives, progressives, and other unusual bedfellows to overcome the challenges that often divide them.
As CEO and President of Solution Citizen, Bill tackles political polarization and revitalizes democracy, helping donors, companies, causes, and campaigns advance pragmatic solutions that address climate change and other intractable “wedge” issues. His current focus is to advance a circular economy and culture through Circle America, a new affinity group and campaign launching at Earthx2026.
As a Curator of the EarthX Congress of Conferences, Bill brings together the world’s foremost environmentalists, conservationists, scientists, political thought leaders, advocates, and academics in the environmental space to bridge perspectives, leverage expertise, and foster multi-partisan collaboration that drives progress for our planet.
As Founder and President of the non-profit Future 500, Bill invited corporate and environmental leaders to work together to create the world’s first corporate supply chain standards for sustainable forestry (between Mitsubishi, Rainforest Action Network, and then 400 other companies), the most effective beverage container recycling program (the California CRV deposit system and its progeny), and the 2008 agreement by both Greenpeace and ExxonMobil to separately support precisely the same federal tax on carbon.
Bill has been a lifelong climate advocate and was integral in design and passing the California “bottle bill”. This legislation brought together an unlikely coalition in the form of Coors, Safeway and the Sierra Club. With his guidance, they created the country’s most cost-effective recycling law by EPA and academic studies. Since enacted in 1987, more than a half-trillion cans, bottles, computers, and electronics have been recycled under this program.
So others can take up where he eventually leaves off, he taught leadership and negotiations at the UC Berkeley Haas Business School, and serves as chairman and a surrogate founding father of BridgeUSA, where young progressives, conservatives, libertarians, and independents all register to decline-to-hate, and engage in democracy by listening, speaking, learning, teaching, and then solving problems together.
Professor Shireman is the author of 7 books. His latest, "In This Together: How Republicans, Democrats, Capitalists, and Activists Are Uniting to Tackle Climate Change and More" co-authored with Trammell S. Crow, can be found on Amazon and in leading bookstores.
When he’s not traveling around the country engaging and inspiring corporate, academic and NGO audiences, he lives in San Francisco with his wife and children. Bill has a soft spot for green tea lattes and meeting people from faraway places who stay at his Airbnb.
As CEO and President of Solution Citizen, Bill tackles political polarization and revitalizes democracy, helping donors, companies, causes, and campaigns advance pragmatic solutions that address climate change and other intractable “wedge” issues. His current focus is to advance a circular economy and culture through Circle America, a new affinity group and campaign launching at Earthx2026.
As a Curator of the EarthX Congress of Conferences, Bill brings together the world’s foremost environmentalists, conservationists, scientists, political thought leaders, advocates, and academics in the environmental space to bridge perspectives, leverage expertise, and foster multi-partisan collaboration that drives progress for our planet.
As Founder and President of the non-profit Future 500, Bill invited corporate and environmental leaders to work together to create the world’s first corporate supply chain standards for sustainable forestry (between Mitsubishi, Rainforest Action Network, and then 400 other companies), the most effective beverage container recycling program (the California CRV deposit system and its progeny), and the 2008 agreement by both Greenpeace and ExxonMobil to separately support precisely the same federal tax on carbon.
Bill has been a lifelong climate advocate and was integral in design and passing the California “bottle bill”. This legislation brought together an unlikely coalition in the form of Coors, Safeway and the Sierra Club. With his guidance, they created the country’s most cost-effective recycling law by EPA and academic studies. Since enacted in 1987, more than a half-trillion cans, bottles, computers, and electronics have been recycled under this program.
So others can take up where he eventually leaves off, he taught leadership and negotiations at the UC Berkeley Haas Business School, and serves as chairman and a surrogate founding father of BridgeUSA, where young progressives, conservatives, libertarians, and independents all register to decline-to-hate, and engage in democracy by listening, speaking, learning, teaching, and then solving problems together.
Professor Shireman is the author of 7 books. His latest, "In This Together: How Republicans, Democrats, Capitalists, and Activists Are Uniting to Tackle Climate Change and More" co-authored with Trammell S. Crow, can be found on Amazon and in leading bookstores.
When he’s not traveling around the country engaging and inspiring corporate, academic and NGO audiences, he lives in San Francisco with his wife and children. Bill has a soft spot for green tea lattes and meeting people from faraway places who stay at his Airbnb.
Speaking At
