William Drenttel

William Drenttel (October 14, 1953 – December 21, 2013) was a designer, author, publisher, social entrepreneur and foundation executive. In 2012, he was the president of Winterhouse Institute, vice president of communications and design for Teach For All, co-director of the Transform Symposium at the Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation, and the recipient of Rockefeller Foundation support to develop models for design and social change. He was president emeritus of AIGA, a fellow of NYU Institute of the Humanities, a senior faculty fellow and social enterprise fellow at Yale School of Management, and the publisher and editorial director of Design Observer, a website covering design, social innovation, urbanism and visual culture. In 2010, Drenttel was elected to the Art Directors Hall of Fame and the Alliance Graphique Internationale, and was the first Henry Wolf Resident in Graphic Design at the American Academy in Rome. He lectured widely in the U.S. and abroad.

He lived in Hamden, Connecticut, with his wife, Jessica Helfand, son, Malcolm, and daughter, Fiona.

Drenttel was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota on October 14, 1953. His family relocated in 1954 to California, where he grew up. He graduated in 1972 from Tustin High School in Tustin, California. From 1972 to 1977, he attended Princeton University, where he received a BA with an Independent Concentration in European Cultural Studies and Film.

Drenttel was a senior vice president, management supervisor at Saatchi & Saatchi Compton Worldwide, where he worked from 1977-1985. Over a decade, he managed over 20 different Procter & Gamble brands in the U.S., Canada and Italy. As a management director, he provided strategic leadership in the packaged goods, fast food, and telecommunications categories, managing the launch of the Procter & Gamble Pampers in Italy in 1980 and the AT&T account that launched cellular telephones in America in 1983. In 1984, after the breakup of AT&T, Drenttel won and managed the cellular telephones advertising accounts for two of the regional Bell Operating Companies, Ameritech and Pacific Telesis. His four years of international experience at Saatchi & Saatchi included one year managing P&G Canada accounts and three years as a managing director of Saatchi & Saatchi Italy, during which time agency billings and staff increased five-fold. Drenttel left Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising as senior vice president in 1985.

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