5 Ways That Businesses Can Help Promote The Mental Wellness Of Their Employees

As a part of my series about the “5 Ways That Businesses Can Help Promote The Mental Wellness Of Their Employees” I had the pleasure of interviewing William F. Merck II (Bill).

Bill Merck’s career includes decades of leadership roles in higher education, the military, and the private and public sectors of the working world. He shares valuable lessons learned with current and aspiring leaders to enhance their opportunities for success and personal enlightenment in his recent books on leadership and developing a personal philosophy of life.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive into our discussion, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path?

That is a very fitting question. I take the idea of using a “backstory,” among other significant insights, to illustrate the influences your life experiences have on the path you take in life and how you view the world in my recent book, Breadcrumbs; Finding a Philosophy of Life.

As for what brought me to my specific career path and world views, I believe it has to do in part with the life I had as a child, being around creative people, observing military veterans of World Wars I and II, and having a father who owned his own business. Growing up in a segregated society — and then later being involved with people from all ethnic and cultural backgrounds, people from other countries and from all walks of life — increasingly opened my eyes to an immensely larger and more rewarding world with each passing year.

I worked in different jobs through high school and college, and after three years in the military, which included a two-year assignment in Germany, I found a position at a college in Virginia. That led to a forty-six-year career in leadership jobs in higher education administration.

You can read the full article with a free account on Authority Magazine’s Medium page.

Bill’s book, Breadcrumbs: Finding a Philosophy of Life is available on Amazon. Read excerpts from the book here.