William J. Littlefield II has given talks on the intersection of philosophy and technology across the globe. Currently, he also serves as President and Chief Technology Officer of Wizest, where he is helping to build a next-generation investment trading platform that democratizes access to financial expertise. Wizest was recently featured in Forbes as a better solution to the problems posed by Robinhood.

William’s work attempts to reconcile 21st century technology, politics, and economics with longstanding concepts in philosophy. His recent research has been divided between applied ethics, social theory, and artificial intelligence. Specifically, he has explored the ethics of technological progress and its impact on climate justice and geopolitics. A series of talks that culminated at the University of Sydney built on the writings of Jean Baudrillard to develop an idea of simulation in human rights theory. And research he conducted with celebrated design theorist, Richard Buchanan, and decorated cognitive scientist, Mark Turner, established limits on computational creativity. 

William earned a graduate degree in world literature and philosophy from Case Western Reserve University, where he also received a degree in natural sciences with a concentration in chemistry. While there, he studied under the Fulbright scholar Florin Berindeanu, himself a student of Jacques Derrida. He also performed years of laboratory work in nanochemistry with the highly-cited Burda group. He completed further postgraduate studies in philosophy at the University of Amsterdam.

Before this, William spent more than a decade training with various Olympic coaches and athletes in the sport of ice skating, qualifying and competing at the US Figure Skating Championships as a singles skater.