Born in San Francisco, Carpenter lived in Florida during his high school years, joining a volunteer fire department.
While attending Harvard University for a degree in chemistry, he spent the summers as a smokejumper for the United States Forest Service.
Carpenter has been on the board of several nonprofits, including the American Foundation for AIDS Research (1985–1991), Annual Reviews (1994–present), and Village Enterprise Fund (1997–2009).
[4] During his high school years, Carpenter lived in rural north Florida, where he was a volunteer firefighter; he helped with both structural and wildland fires.
After his graduation in 1962, he was commissioned as an officer in the United States Air Force, where he had an assignment as a test parachutist because of his smokejumping experience.
[3] From 1966–1968, he was the Vietnam program manager for the Advanced Research Projects Agency and served as the Air Force Aide to the White House.
[4] At ALZA, he oversaw the "highly unusual" and "revolutionary" decision in 1987 to require women to sign an informed consent form to receive their IUD "Progestasert".
[10][11] In 1987, The Washington Post noted that ALZA was "the only pharmaceutical manufacturer to try to make informed consent a condition for use of a marketed prescription product".