Bill Simmons
President & CEO, Hope Rises International · Board Chair, Accord Network · Author
I'm the President and CEO of Hope Rises International, a 120-year-old Christian humanitarian organization (founded in 1906 as American Leprosy Missions) working to end neglected tropical diseases. I chair the board of the Accord Network, where I co-lead AI programming for relief and development leaders.
I don't write code. I direct AI builds in plain English. Working this way, with no developers on staff, I've directed the build of more than 50 applications: millions of dollars of software, hundreds of thousands of lines of code. Most of it runs Hope Rises, a team of fewer than 25 people, from the analytics suite that replaced our agency to our own Salesforce-to-Google pipelines, dashboards, and agents; some I've built for other organizations. I write about what that actually looks like inside a working organization: what's real, who's using it, and what to do Monday.
Before this: twenty years running a retail chain, which is where the systems instinct comes from. Underneath it: a three-month sabbatical at a monastery in New Mexico that became a book, The Way of Interruption. It isn't a book about AI. It's the reason I don't write about AI as though the only question worth asking is what it can do.
Writing
Most of these were published on LinkedIn first. The finals are kept here on my own domain, where they are easy to find, link, and keep. Follow along there for the conversation.
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Building
I build in public where I can. The public artifacts:
- AI Briefing Agent (open template). An agent that watches your YouTube channels, reads your newsletters, and emails you one short brief. Free on GitHub: clone it and point it at your sources. Background: the post.
- The AI Boardroom. A multi-agent Claude Code system designed to disagree: four to eight voices, two rounds, a synthesis of where they converge and split. Buildable markdown format available; DM me on LinkedIn and I'll send it.
- Inside Hope Rises. Donor intelligence, Salesforce-to-Google pipelines, financial reporting, foundation screening, an inbox agent that triages my email. I open these builds up one post at a time in the writing.
Speaking
Live-build sessions, not slide decks. You leave with something you can use Monday.
- Not Just Another AI Talk: Build Custom Agents That Actually Save You Time. July 29, 2026, 1:00 to 4:00 PM. A three-hour live-build workshop for nonprofit teams, co-presented with Todd Bemis (TLC).
- Accord Summer AI Summit. August 25 to 27, 2026, Ignatius House, Atlanta. Building real software for your own organization, with the Accord Network. No coding skills required. (Registration full; waitlist open.)
The Book
The Way of Interruption: Spiritual Practice for Organizational Life. Ancient practices, tailored for the modern workplace, that can turn an organization's culture from obligation into a life-giving journey.
Connect
The fastest way to reach me is LinkedIn.
The Daily Practice by email: a short weekday Scripture reading from The Way of Interruption. Confirm by email, unsubscribe anytime.
Or send a note directly (bulk book orders, speaking, anything else):
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