Bill Strickland

     Bill Strickland restores our faith in ethical, accountable, and visionary leadership. As CEO of the Manchester Bidwell Corporation, he has grown a nearly bankrupt community training center into an innovative and successful organization, creating a model for education, training, arts and, most importantly, hope. In the process, he has reshaped the business of social change in America.

     In the course of his remarkable journey Bill Strickland has won a MacArthur Genius grant, lectured at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, served on the Board of the National Endowment for the Arts, and received the “Coming Up Taller” Award, presented to him at the White House by former first lady Hilary Clinton. Strickland also founded the MCG Jazz series, the longest running and most successful jazz subscription series in America, which has produced over 1200 concerts and garnered three Grammys.

     But his accomplishments as a leader and humanitarian are reflected not in awards or accolades, but in the thousands of people who have raised themselves out of poverty and into the world of full-time employment, through the organizations that Strickland built.