Bill is Director of the Connect Your Community Institute. He has been an organizer, innovator, researcher, advocate and policy leader in the digital inclusion movement since 1995, when he created one of the nation’s earliest community initiatives to refurbish computers for lower-income households, the Stockyard Area Development Association “Computer Ownership for Neighbors” program in Cleveland.

Among other significant contributions:

• From 2010 through 2012, Bill organized and directed the OneCommunity Connect Your Community Project, one of the the largest and most effective broadband adoption initiatives funded by the Federal Broadband Technology Opportunities Program.
• Bill was one of the founders of the National Digital Inclusion Alliance and one of its two initial staff, serving as the organization’s Research and Policy Director from 2015 to 2020,  during which NDIA became recognized as the principal national network of community digital inclusion practitioners and advocates.  Bill remains engaged with NDIA as an advisor.
• Bill researched and wrote CYC’s groundbreaking 2017 investigation (co-published with NDIA) into AT&T’s digital redlining of Cleveland, which pioneered the use of FCC broadband mapping data to reveal that company’s practice of quietly withholding technology upgrades from lower-income neighborhoods.  His work using Census and FCC data to document digital exclusion at the community level, including annual NDIA and CYC  “Worst Connected Cities” lists, has helped shape media narratives, advocacy and public policy in Cleveland and many other communities.

Bill is a 2026 recipient of the Charles Benton Digital Equity Champion Award from NDIA and the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society.