Making Waves

>>Bill Schiller is a modest man. "As someone once said, you can accomplish whatever you set out to accomplish, as long as you don't mind who takes credit for it." With that said, this 38-year-old has accomplished much.

The public relations coordinator for International College for the past two years, Schiller developed a love of writing early on. He was born in Chicago, but raised at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers and considers Wickliffe, Ky., home.

"It might sound arrogant, but I always knew I had a way with words and that my life would revolve around writing," he says. And so it has-as a teenage disc jockey in Kentucky, a journalist in the Cayman Islands, and as a book, newspaper and magazine editor in different places throughout the country. And always as a writer, poet and photographer.

Schiller came to his current position from the Greater Naples Chamber of Commerce. "I handled the chamber's communications during a critical period of community repositioning," he explains. "While I was very happy to have assisted in a variety of initiatives helpful to businesses, I was asking, 'What now?'"

He saw an ad for the International College position, went there without an appointment and was hired a week later. "We've opened a new building, added classes and faculty. I see it as a repositioning in terms of public awareness of the school and all that it's doing to serve students in our region."

Schiller is a believer in service. He volunteers as a photographer for the Heart Walks in Lee and Collier counties, he's vice president of the Naples Press Club and is still active with the chamber. He also finds time to write the occasional play and poem and to work on his book, which focuses on Collier County veterans of World War II. He hopes to complete it by next year.