#459: SPOTLIGHT: Bill Cummings

#459: Bill Cummings

March 17, 2026

A Backbeat of Community 

Question for Bill:  

What is one thing that is small and perhaps nuanced or surprising and perhaps typically subconscious that you can tell drives you each day?

Bill's Response: 

When I first got Amanda’s request to answer this question, I had to sit with it for a while.

The one thing I kept coming back to was curiosity about people’s lives.

I’ve noticed this about myself over the years.

When I sit down to meet with someone, I’m usually curious about how they got to where they are. Not just what they’re working on right now, but the road that brought them there.

So I start asking questions.

“Where did you grow up?”

“What was life like for you during that time?”

“How did you end up in the work you’re doing now?”

These questions often come up in meetings that are supposed to be about something else. A project. A partnership. Something on the calendar that seemed important when we scheduled it.

And eventually we get to those things. Maybe.

But before we get to the reason the meeting was scheduled, I find myself wondering about their story. Their first job. The place they think of as home. The moments that shaped them.

I don’t really plan to do that. It’s just where my curiosity goes.

And when I think back on those meetings a few days later, the things I remember most are rarely the agenda items.

It’s the stories.

Someone who told me about a parent who worked nonstop to keep the family afloat.

Or the neighborhood they rode their bike through that opened their heart and mind to people who were different from them.

Or the winding path that led them into the work they’re doing now.

Those are the things that stay with me.

And almost every time I walk away from a conversation like that, I’m reminded how much there is to a person that I would never have known if we had only talked about the reason the meeting was originally scheduled.