March 2020 Speaker: Bill Zotter: "5’ 9” How I explained privilege to my children"

Video of March's speaker is up! 

The topic for Bill’s presentation this month comes from a discussion with his daughter on race and privilege. She has seen instances of racisim, sexism, and other forms of discrimination in her school by her classmates. That discussion led to questions. How can people in this day and age not see the error in their own actions? Why don’t they see how privileged they are? Bill used an analogy of height to help explain what he thinks the answers are to those questions.

Bill grew up in the Lehigh Valley and has observed how the area has grown more diverse over that time. He is a divorced dad of two children and enjoys trying to answer those tough questions that children ask and make adults ponder why they haven’t thought about them before.

Bill entered the United States Army after high school where he was trained as a communication systems troubleshooter. He was stationed at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, Fort Hood Texas and Mannheim Germany. While stationed at Fort Hood, his division was sent to Saudi Arabia and Iraq during the Persian Gulf War.

After serving for 5 years, Bill was honorably discharged from the Army and then served in the Army Reserves while attending college He went to Lehigh Carbon Community College and then transferred to Drexel University to study electrical engineering.

After college he moved back to the Lehigh Valley to work at a local electronics company for the past 19 years.