William Dietz is the chair of the Sumner M. Redstone Global Center for Prevention and Wellness at the School of Public Health at George Washington University. From 1997 to 2012 he was the director of the Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity in the Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion at the CDC. In 1998, William was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. His work has focused on the causes, consequences, prevention, and treatment of childhood obesity. He was the co-chair of the Lancet Commission on Obesity's 2019 report on the Global Syndemic of Obesity, Undernutrition, and Climate Change. He received his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1970 a Ph.D. in nutritional biochemistry from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.