John Cunningham Whitehead (April 2, 1922 – February 7, 2015) was an American banker and civil servant, a board member of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation (WTC Memorial Foundation), and, until his resignation in May 2006, chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation.

[3] Whitehead started his career at Goldman Sachs in New York City as an associate in the investment banking division.

He rose to become chairman over a total of 38 years at the firm and retired in 1984 as co-chairman and co-senior partner.

[8] He had a long association with the Rockefeller family, having held positions at various times with family-created institutions such as Rockefeller University, the Asia Society, where he was chairman emeritus and an honorary life trustee, the Lincoln Center, and the WTC Memorial Foundation.

In 1995, he donated $10 million to Harvard Business School to start the John C. Whitehead Fund for Not-for-Profit Management.

The National Council of the Boy Scouts of America recognized his service with the Silver Buffalo Award in 2015.

[citation needed] Whitehead sat on the advisory board of the Washington-based think-tank Global Financial Integrity, which conducts research on illicit financial flows and the damaging effects they have on developing countries, as well as the advisory board for DC-based nonprofit America Abroad Media.

[13] Whitehead was co-chairman of AMDeC Foundation, a 28-member organization of leaders in biomedical research and technology in New York State.

[14] In 2006, John Whitehead joined hands with late actor Paul Newman and Josh Weston, former chairman of ADP, to co-found Safe Water Network, to improve access to safe water to underserved communities around the world.

On November 12, 2008, Whitehead said at the Reuters Global Finance Summit that the U.S. economy faced an economic slump deeper than the Great Depression and that a growing deficit threatened the credit of the country.