As a professor in the MBA program at McDonough Georgetown, Bill teaches Principled Leadership for Business and Society and Managing the Enterprise. He developed and previously taught courses in Corporate Social Responsibility and Leadership and Management of Nonprofit Organizations. He founded Georgetown Business for Impact at McDonough and oversees the program, which partners with companies, nonprofits and government to create social, environmental and economic impact.
Bill is also co-founder and co-chair of the Coalition to Transform Advanced Care, a national alliance focused on reforming advanced illness/end of life care in the U.S. Previously, he was CEO of AARP, a membership organization of 40 million people 50 and older. Prior to AARP, he was founder and president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, EVP of CARE, the international relief and development organization and co-founder and president of Porter Novelli, a global public relations firm and now part of Omnicom. He began his career in marketing at Unilever, was an account supervisor at a New York advertising agency and later served as Director of Advertising and Creative Services at the Peace Corps.
Bill is on the boards of: the Coalition to Transform Advanced Care (C-TAC), the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Advocacy Network; the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids (chair); Capital Caring, and Strategic Partnerships. He co-chairs the Culture & Inclusiveness Action Collaborative of the National Academy of Medicine and served on NAM committees on: The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health; and also Dying in America: Improving Quality and Honoring Individual Preferences Near the End of Life. He is co-chair of the advisory board of the Medical Consortium on Climate and Health and on the advisory board of the Palliative & Advanced Illness Research Center at Penn.
Bill is the author of Good Business: The Talk, Fight, Win Way to Change the World (2021, Johns Hopkins Univ. Press). His previous books are: Fifty Plus: Give Meaning and Purpose to the Best Time of Your Life (with Boe Workman, St. Martin’s Press) and Managing the Older Worker: How to Prepare for the New Organizational Order (with Peter Cappelli, Harvard University Press).
Bill has a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.A. from Penn’s Annenberg School for Communication. He pursued doctoral studies at New York University and taught marketing management for ten years in the University of Maryland MBA program; he also taught health communications there.
Hear more from Bill Novelli on his work with the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.
For more information about the Outstanding Achievement in Public Health Awards, generously supported by Johnson & Johnson, click here.