William Heaney

William (Bill) Heaney graduated from Amherst College in 1968. After college, Bill taught reading in New York City schools. He earned a Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia University’s Teacher’s College, which took him to the South West Pacific, where he researched migration and economic opportunity in the Wahgi Valley of Papua New Guinea. In 1981, after teaching at the University of Papua New Guinea in Port Moresby, Bill returned to the United States. He worked in finance and non-profit administration, earning an MBA from Yale University’s School of Management. After several years as the administrator of Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, he taught classes in anthropology at Columbia and the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. Bill was the former co-owner of the Oshkosh Northwestern, a fisherman, and a photographer. He was a 2003 recipient of the Oshkosh Area Community Foundation’s Partner in Philanthropy Award. Bill passed away at the age of 75 from COVID-19 in November 2020.

Bill established the Susan Hardy Heaney Memorial Scholarship in 1997, in memory of his mother. Susan was vice president of the Oshkosh Northwestern Company. She passed away in 1971.