The Echo

William D. Budinger

Founding Director, The Rodel Foundations
Bill Budinger is an inventor and the holder of more than three dozen patents. He is also the founder of Rodel, Inc., where he served for 33 years as its CEO and Chairman. Bill has served on the boards of other companies as well as community and cultural organizations. He has been honored as the SBA Small Business Person of the Year, the Eastern Technology Council’s Legendary CEO, and was awarded the Henry Crown Leadership Award. Bill serves on several corporate and nonprofit boards, including the Aspen Institute. He was an elected delegate and chair of the White House Conference on Small Business, a panelist for Mikhail Gorbachev’s first State of the World Forum, and has been a guest lecturer at several universities including MIT and Harvard. His writings have appeared in various law journals as well as trade and public policy magazines. He drafted part of the 1998 patent reform legislation and has testified on patent, trade, and labor law reform before several committees of the U.S. House and Senate. Most of Bill’s time is spent helping the Rodel Foundations [link to FAQs page] in their mission to improve public education.

William (Bill) D. Budinger

Bill Budinger is the founder of Rodel, Inc., where he served for 33 years as its chairman and chief executive officer. Bill is an inventor and holder of more than three dozen patents including key processing technologies that enabled the return of semiconductor manufacturing to the U.S. in the 1990s. Rodel is currently the global leader in high-precision planarization technology for semiconductors, silicon wafers and storage media substrates.
Bill is also a founder of the Rodel Foundations. He continues to serve on various non-profit boards including the several Rodel Foundations, the Grand Canyon Trust, the Aspen Institute Executive Committee (where he chairs both the Seminars and Socrates Programs), Third Way and the Brookings Institute Governance Studies. Bill served as a founding trustee for the Democratic Leadership Council, the Democracy Alliance, and as a board member of Third Way, the Progressive Policy Institute and is a mentor to The Truman Project.
Bill served as a panelist on Talk of the Nation and as a guest lecturer at several universities including MIT and Harvard. His writings have appeared in various law journals as well as trade and public policy magazines. He drafted much of the 1998 patent reform law and has testified on patent, trade and labor law reform before various committees of the House and Senate.
Bill has won numerous awards including Legendary CEO and the Henry Crown Leadership award. Bill also founded and chairs the Aspen Institute’s Rodel Fellowships in Public Leadership which provides two year fellowships for top-level Democratic and Republican state elected officials to help them transition from politicians to statesmen.
Most of Bill’s time now is spent on public policy issues and helping lead the Rodel Foundations in their mission to improve pre-K through grade 12 public education. The Rodel Foundation’s work in Delaware helped that state win the Federal Education Department’s Race to the Top competition.