William Ferris

William N. Ferris, Ph.D. serves as the Executive Director for the Duke RESILE Initiative and as the Executive Director for the Center for Innovation in Risk-analysis for Climate Adaptation and Decision-making (CIRCAD).


His research interests focus on natural resource economics, climate resilience, and community sustainability.


William holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Virginia Tech, earned through the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics, where his declared focuses were in environmental and resource economics and development economics. He was awarded and completed a four-year fellowship with the University's Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science. While at Virginia Tech, William also engaged in economic development work through the University's Center for Economic and Community Engagement, where he served as project lead, co-lead, and team member on economic development projects focusing on agriculture, workforce development, small town revitalization, and other topics.

Prior to his time at Virginia Tech, William worked for the City of Williamsburg, Virginia in the field of economic development and earned a B.A. in Economics from William & Mary, as recipient of one of the University's Monroe Scholar scholarships.

William's research interests include investigating novel solutions to leverage community engagement to achieve climate resilience and economic development goals. William is a strong believer in mixed methods research as a tool to leverage grassroots perspective to validate and steer quantitative analysis and views his role as an economist, environmentalist, and economic development supporter as a 'force multiplier' for communities in their efforts to achieve their goals.

William is well-versed in topics like agriculture, stormwater management, coastal resiliency, and natural resource conservation, is a full-strength data analyst, and is skilled at navigating industry-academia collaborative work.