With a career spent communicating through various mediums, Bill Zimmerman is fascinated with how messages are delivered and new ideas take hold in our hyper-connected world. A member of the faculty since 2017, Zimmerman teaches COMM 372: Digital PR, COMM 473: PR Campaigns, COMM 428e: Social Media Strategies (online) and COMM 471: PR Media & Methods. He is the faculty supervisor for CommAgency's social media division and runs the Bellisario College's social media/content creator camp for high schoolers in the summer.
He is the author of "Understanding the Creator Economy: Making Digital Media Work for You," a textbook published in 2024 by Kendall Hunt.
He’s also presented at various conferences such as eduWeb Summit, HighEdWeb, Social Media Strategies Summit: Higher Ed and The One Club for Creativity Educator Summit.
For four years and 100+ episodes, he produced a podcast, “Happy Valley Hustle,” telling stories of entrepreneurship and digital age ingenuity. Before transitioning to the faculty, Zimmerman worked in Penn State's Office of Strategic Communications since 2012. Prior to that, he spent nearly a decade as a journalist at a daily newspaper in western Pennsylvania. He lives in State College with his wife, son and three cats.
