William K. Reilly

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William K. Reilly (born January 26, 1940) was a former administrator of the EPA and has been a director of DuPont since 1993.

Born in Decatur, Illinois, into a conservative, deeply religious household, Reilly was strongly influenced by his father, a highway construction steel merchant. Reilly's father then led his family from Illinois to South Texas when William Reilly was 10. From the Rio Grande Valley, the Reillys moved to Fall River, Massachusetts, where he finished high school at Durfee High School. From Durfee he went on to Yale where he earned a B.A. in History. During his Yale years, Reilly took advantage of Yale's junior year abroad program to study in France. Reilly then earned a law degree from Harvard, completing a thesis on land reform in Chile. After law school, Reilly entered the Army and served a tour of duty (1966-1967) in Europe with an intelligence unit planning for the evacuation of U.S. troops from France. During that time, he married Elizabeth Buxton.

After completing his military service, Reilly returned to school at Columbia University, where he earned a Masters degree in urban planning. In 1968, fresh from planning school and a four month project in Turkey, Reilly went to work for Urban America, Inc., where he worked to integrate century old concerns for urban beautification with the concerns brought to the forefront of the American conscience by the civil rights movement - concerns which would grow into the environmental justice movement with which he dealt during his EPA Administration.

In 1970, Reilly became a senior staff member of the President's Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) under Russell Train, who would later become the second EPA Administrator in 1972. Reilly moved from CEQ to become President of The Conservation Foundation, which merged with World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in 1985. After the merger, he served as President of World Wildlife Fund until taking over as administrator at the EPA in 1989. After leaving the Agency during the final days of 1992, Reilly returned to World Wildlife Fund.

Mr. Reilly is founding partner of Aqua International Partners, L.P., a private equity fund dedicated to investing in companies engaged in water and renewable energy. He formerly served as administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Payne visiting professor at the Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, president of the World Wildlife Fund and The Conservation Foundation. Mr. Reilly is a director of ConocoPhillips, Royal Caribbean International, the Packard Foundation, and the American Academy in Rome. He also serves as chairman of the board of the World Wildlife Fund, co-chair of the National Commission on Energy Policy, and chair of the Advisory Board for the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University.

Administrators of the Environmental Protection Agency
Ruckelshaus • Train • Costle • Burford • Ruckelshaus • Thomas • Reilly • Browner • Whitman • Leavitt • Johnson