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Source: William John Donaldson

William John Donaldson (born September 24, 1958), known as John Donaldson, is an American chess player, author, journalist and chess official. Like many of his contemporaries, he began playing in the aftermath of the World Chess Championship 1972 between Fischer and Spassky. He joined the Tacoma Chess Club in September 1972, and is still involved with the game almost 50 years later.
FIDE awarded Donaldson the title of International Master (IM) in 1983. He has two grandmaster (GM) norms and missed a third, at the 2000 Paul Keres Memorial in Vancouver, by half a point. Among the international tournaments in which Donaldson has finished first or tied for first are Hamar (Norway) 1986; Philadelphia 1987; Bermuda 1995, 1996, and 1997 (=1st with GM Sergey Kudrin; Lindsborg (Kansas) 2002 (=1st with GM Alexander Onischuk; and Calgary 2007. He also won the 2001 Lindsborg Rotary Open, a three-day event, ahead of three GMs and three IMs.
Donaldson has captained the U.S. national team on 25 occasions, including six Chess Olympiads from 1986 to 1996. He has written almost 40 books on different aspects of the game. His book Bobby Fischer and His World was selected as the 2020 Chess Book Collectors Most Popular Book of the Year.
In 1990, Donaldson was elected to the Policy Board of the United States Chess Federation. He also became an editor of the magazine Inside Chess, published by Yasser Seirawan. After the magazine folded, he moved to San Francisco, where he became chess director of the San Francisco Mechanics Institute. He qualified to play in the 2002 and the 2003 U.S. Chess Championship. He has achieved two norms for the title of grandmaster, at Lindsborg 2002 and at Stratton Mountain 2003.
On December 9, 2006, Donaldson was named US zone president in FIDE, replacing Robert Tanner, who resigned on December 4, 2006.