As an AIS board member and advocate for the stuttering community, Will was recognized with the Freeing Voices Changing Lives Award, which recognizes individuals who’ve achieved professional success and not allowed stuttering to hold them back in their chosen careers. Past recipients of the award include President Joseph R. Biden; actors Colin Firth, Samuel L. Jackson and Bruce Willis; singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran and former New Jersey Governor and Chair of the Board of Carnegie Corporation of New York Thomas H. Kean.
“It is an incredible honor and privilege to join the ranks of those who’ve turned a speech impediment into a way to engage with other people on a deeper level and with greater empathy and understanding,” Will said. “I’m humbled to be in a position to give back to The American Institute for Stuttering and make life-changing therapy and support available to those who stutter while educating the wider public about this complex neurologic and genetic condition.”
Speaking at the event, Will shared how he was relentlessly bullied for having a stutter throughout his childhood, leading to problems both in and out of the classroom. Without access to the kind of specialized speech therapy that AIS provides, he grew frustrated and angry in his teenage years before finding a way to harness his feelings on the football field. Will ultimately went on to earn a scholarship to Yale University and subsequently MIT.
“In the past, I would wake up with this pit in my stomach that the world thinks I’m stupid, the world hates me, and I have to prove them wrong,” he said. “Now it’s, ‘I have to come through for my friends. I have to come through for my family, for my wife and kids.’ I have to show them how to take down bullies, how to fight and be courageous, how to get up in front of a room of 420 people and stutter and talk. That’s what inspires me now.”
For over twenty years, the American Institute for Stuttering has helped thousands of individuals from over a dozen countries worldwide speak freely and live fearlessly by offering stuttering speech therapy to adults and children. With scholarships available so that therapy is accessible to all, AIS works with its clients to accept and work with their stutters and to free them of the physical and emotional blocks that make speech difficult. For more information, visit stutteringtreatment.org
Media Contact: Kelly Magee / [email protected]
SOURCE Tredway Management, LLC
