Bill Barkeley

Bio

Bill Barkeley is a sought after and dynamic motivational public speaker that travels the world sharing his life experiences as a deaf-blind person with health care organizations, corporations, schools, and non-profits. Bill Barkeley is one of 15,000 people in the U.S. and 100,000 in the world with Usher's Syndrome (Type 2) the leading cause of deaf-blindness in the world.

Bill Barkeley graduated from the University of Southern California in 1984 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration. Bill has been an employee of Steelcase Inc. a Fortune 500 company for 23 years with leadership positions in sales and marketing in Seattle, San Francisco and Grand Rapids. Bill currently is Director of Marketing for the Steelcase Premium Group for the Coalesse, Brayton, Metro and Vecta contract furniture brands.

Bill is past president of the Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired. He is on the executive committee of the Hearing Loss Association of America (Grand Rapids chapter). He is on the Board of Directors of Metro Health Systems which is the fourth largest employer in the Grand Rapids, Michigan area.

Bill recently completed a climb of Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa as a project for the deaf-blind, an intensely personal and motivational story of aspiration, hope and faith. He has been featured on local, regional, national and international media such as WOODTV 8, The Grand Rapids Press, Faith Magazine, Hear The World, Healthy Hearing.com, Sierra Club Radio and Good Morning America. A film documentary by Josh Levine, Walk Your Own Path - Bill Barkeley's climb of Mount Kilimanjaro, has just been released to the adventure film circuit. The climb was covered in the July 2008 edition of Outside Magazine.

Upcoming service projects include No Barriers USA and the Global Explorers 'Lead the Way' mentor program.