William Ury

William Ury is an American author, academic, anthropologist, and negotiation expert. He co-founded the Harvard Program on Negotiation. Additionally, he helped found the International Negotiation Network with former President Jimmy Carter. Ury is the co-author of Getting to Yes with Roger Fisher, which set out the method of principled negotiation and established the idea of the best alternative to a negotiated agreement (BATNA) within negotiation theory.

Ury was educated at Le Rosey and at Andover Academy where he graduated in 1970.In college, Ury studied anthropology, linguistics, and classics. Ury received his B.A. from Yale and his PhD in social anthropology from Harvard. In 1979 he co-founded the Harvard Negotiation Project of which he is currently a Distinguished Fellow. In 1981, he helped found the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.