About Bill Deering
I walk into rooms full of students who think they have heard it all and I change the way they treat each other. Permanently. With 35,000+ students reached across 31 states and grade levels 4th-12th grade. I don't deliver motivational talks, I deliver behavioral change experiences. Most speakers tell a story and leave. I use mine differently.
For 42 years I lived with a severe stutter so debilitating it once took me three full minutes just to say my own name. I wouldn't answer a phone until I was 20. I ate my way through isolation. By my sophomore year of high school I had no friends, had gained 55 pounds, and was failing nearly every class. That experience isn't my back story. It's my method.
When students watch me speak, they don't just hear about what it feels like to be the kid who is different, isolated, and convinced something is wrong with them. They feel it. That visceral moment; That shift in the room is what changes how they see each other. Not for a day. For good. The turning point came when a man I happened to meet told me something that rewired everything: "Bill, when you stutter people stop. They listen closely. That's your advantage." It was the moment I stopped living as a victim of my difference and started using it as a tool.
It's the same shift I create for every student in every room. I personally lead every session. What reaches students isn't a presentation, it's a person standing in front of them who has actually lived it. After leading assemblies for 4th through 12th graders, I know what breaks through the noise, what opens kids up, and what creates lasting cultural change in a school.