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Carter Loard Bays (born August 12, 1975) is an American author, playwright, television writer, and musician. He co-created the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother, and served as showrunner, writer and executive producer for all nine seasons.

His novel, The Mutual Friend was released in 2022 by Dutton Books.

Bays was born in Cleveland, Ohio. He grew up in Shaker Heights, Ohio, and attended Shaker Heights High School. While in high school, his play Five Visits From Mr. Whitcomb was selected by Young Playwrights Inc. (founded by Stephen Sondheim) as a finalist in its 1993 Young Playwrights Festival. It was produced at Playwrights Horizons in New York City in the fall of 1993.

Bays studied English at Wesleyan University, where he met Craig Thomas who would later become his writing partner and co-creator of How I Met Your Mother. While at Wesleyan, Bays and Thomas co-founded the band The Solids, best known for the How I Met Your Mother theme song, "Hey Beautiful".

In the summer of 1996, Bays and Thomas worked as interns in the Development department of MTV.

In 1997, Bays began writing for Late Show with David Letterman. His work received five Emmy nominations.

He and Thomas then created How I Met Your Mother, which ran from 2005–2014.

Bays also wrote for American Dad!, Quintuplets Oliver Beene. and co-created Fox's The Goodwin Games.

Carter's debut novel, The Mutual Friend, was published June 7, 2022, through Dutton Books.

Bays lives in New York City with his wife, Denise Cox Bays, and their three children.

He is an Assistant Adjunct Professor at the Columbia University School of the Arts, where he teaches television writing in the masters film program. He is also an Associate Fellow at Davenport College at Yale University. For three years he served on the board of the Armed Services Arts Partnership, which helps veterans return to civilian life through comedy and the arts.