William Ury
Bestselling Author
Co-Founder of Harvard’s Program on Negotiation
Bestselling author, and co-founder of Harvard’s Program on Negotiation, William Ury has spent the past 45 years helping individuals, organizations and nations at war get to YES.
William is one of the world’s leading experts on negotiation and mediation. Getting to YES, a sixteen-million-copy bestseller translated into over thirty-five languages, and the author of Getting Past No, The Power of a Positive No, The Third Side, and, most recently, the award-winning Getting to Yes with Yourself.
William has served as a negotiation adviser and mediator in conflicts ranging from wildcat coal mine strikes to boardroom battles to ethnic wars in the Middle East, Africa, the Balkans, the Caucasus, and Indonesia. Together with President Jimmy Carter, he co-founded the International Negotiation Network aimed at resolving civil wars around the world. In recent years, he served as Senior Advisor to Colombian President Juan
Manuel Santos in negotiating an end to fifty years of civil war.
“A lot of people ask me after all these years of working on war, are you an optimist or pessimist? I like to answer that I’m actually a Possibilist. I believe in human potential...”
“My purpose here is to share the art of Possibilism with you so that together we can help make our world safer and happier for all.”
William has served as a negotiation adviser and mediator in conflicts ranging from wildcat coal mine strikes to boardroom battles to ethnic wars in the Middle East, Africa, the Balkans, the Caucasus, and Indonesia. Together with President Jimmy Carter, he co-founded the International Negotiation Network aimed at resolving civil wars around the world. In recent years, he served as Senior Advisor to Colombian President Juan
Manuel Santos in negotiating an end to fifty years of civil war.
“A lot of people ask me after all these years of working on war, are you an optimist or pessimist? I like to answer that I’m actually a Possibilist. I believe in human potential...”
“My purpose here is to share the art of Possibilism with you so that together we can help make our world safer and happier for all.”