Bill Haney

Bill Haney is a filmmaker, inventor and entrepreneur. As a writer, director and producer of both narrative documentary films, he has won The Gabriel Prize, A Silver Hugo, The Earthwatch Award, A Marine Conservation Award, and an Amnesty International Award. Chosen as Global Leader of Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum, he has won an Humanitarian Award from Harvard Medical School, a Distinguished Service Award from the Senior Olympics, the Slow Food Prize, a Genesis Award, an Achievement Award from the ACLU, been repeatedly nominated for a NAACP Image Award, been short listed for an Oscar and won the Pare Lorentz Award.Bill’s portfolio as a film maker includes award-winning documentaries on socially important subjects such as coal mining (The Last Mountain, 2011) and worker exploitation (The Price of Sugar, 2007) and his work as writer/producer on Tim Disney’s civil rights drama, American Violet.Jim Allison: Breakthrough, his latest work, celebrates the imagination and resilience that our greatest scientists display on their quest to push the frontiers of knowledge. Featuring the extraordinary journey of immunologist Jim Allison from his childhood in foster support after the death of his mother in Friday Night Lights, Creationist Texas to his groundbreaking achievements in cancer research, Bill plumbs the incredible human drama of a life as a pioneer in the life sciences. Haney was inspired to highlight Allison’s discoveries after hearing his college roommate Tyler Jack’s description of Allison’s amazing life. Made with partner Tim Disney under their Uncommon Productions banner, Jim Allison: Breakthrough was shot across the U.S. in 2017 and 2018, with its final day of filming taking place hours before Allison received the 2018 Nobel Prize in Medicine.As an inventor and entrepreneur, Bill started his first company as a college freshman, inventing air pollution control systems for power plants now in use in utilities the world over. He has since founded or co-founded more than a dozen technology companies. Presently, Bill is the co-founder and CEO of Dragonfly Therapeutics, a biotech company developing drugs to cure cancer, and co-founder and CEO of Skyhawk Therapeutics, a biotech company developing drugs to cure RNA-splicing based disease – from devastating neurological conditions like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Disease, to major cancers.Bill serves or has served on a variety of non-profit and government boards including for the NRDC, US EPA, US DOE, Harvard’s Kennedy School and MIT. He is a founder of World Connect, a non-profit partnered with the Peace Corps and dedicating to improving the health and welfare of mothers and children in the developing world, with programs now launched in more than 1000 villages in 24 countries.